The Great Golden Digger Project

An Exercise in Sphexoskepsis

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Zero wasp activity this morning. Are they really done, or just avoiding the chill?

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Expanding the community to the fire pit.

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Meet!

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A bunch of slow movers this morning, a assume because the heat wave has broken-- even a bit of rain last night. This one here is busy, though, working on a second hole in one little square. Do they meet or diverge, I wonder?

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Two of the three wasps active tonight. One digging, the other engaged in this odd fidgeting/checking behavior that I've observed a lot of this month. Not working on anything, just checking holes, moving surface bits around, patrolling.

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The state of the wasp field tonight. They're about done.

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Epic tailings pile.

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What's it LIKE down there??

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Today I noticed that many of the still-active holes are up around the base of this pine tree, above the sandy permeable pavers where most of the nests are. I imagine that these were late to emerge, and found all of the easy real estate taken already?

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Nearby, but unrelated to, my sphex friends: a hornet eating a bee.

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The wasp field is littered with these. Chrysalises of newly-hatched wasps, larvae fed underground on tiny chartreuse-hued grasshoppers until they spun these and emerged, winged and ready to bury themselves. Such a frenzied life cycle, and now they will hide underground, rest, hibernate, until next July.

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They're finishing up. Flying away to die, somewhere, as the eggs they have buried begin to hatch. They are still working, but in ones and twos where just days ago there were busy dozens. I try to use my flash to peer down their holes, but they just go down and down.

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Cultivating neighborhood wasp appreciation.

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A thief! Caught this ant stealing the grasshopper that a wasp had left outside its hole.

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So maybe, as scientists tire and taunt her, what Sphex is thinking is this: “Can I ever understand what it is like to be two-legged? Waistless? Earthbound, like them?” – but in wasp words, and colored by wasp sensibilities. Sensibilities I couldn’t imagine in forty flights of fancy.

Katharine Merow, “Wasps on Autopilot,” Philosophy Now 2013, https://philosophynow.org/issues/96/Wasps_on_Autopilot

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A video from yesterday evening to give a sense of the general activity level around the nests. Very buzzy!

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You caught the bug... Now what are you going to DO with it?