Josh and I recently bought a house. We (mostly he) have been pretty busy renovating it before we move in. We discovered some sublet-ers though. There was a descent sized wasp nest hanging outside the front door, sort of as my entomological welcome mat. Josh so kindly knocked it down for me to get some pics of for you, my general public

From the outside it is hard to tell what is all going on with that mass of paper crap. But when you start peeling the layers back you can see that its actually quite intricate.

In fact, beyond all the paper layers there are these perfectly replicated cells where the eggs are deposited and the larvae develop.

The workers chew up decaying wood material, mix it with their saliva to make a paste, and spit it back out to make the cells.

What I found kind of interesting was that there were levels of these layers of cells spaced apart by pedicel-like structures.

Turns out wasps aren’t so bad at settin’ up house either.

Coincidently, a reader sent in a question about bees/wasps. Marlena wrote:

“Can you still get stung from a dead bee? I guess I don’t understand how bees release their stingers. Is it always on the outside of their body or is it inside their body and launched in some way when they are aggravated?

Thanks for your help.”

Wasps and some bees can sting repeatedly, and some bees can only sting once, and then there are bees that can’t sting at all. Once dead though, no one is stinging. The stinger (on bees in particular) is made up of a protective sheath on the outside, a stylus (the part that injects the venom), which is connected to a venom sac and gland. In general, bees don’t just wake up on the wrong side of the hive and decide that they are going to sting someone. There is an aggression-type pheromone that is released when the bee gets defensive, either in protecting the nest or itself. Once that happens there are muscle contractions that are needed to help pump the venom from the gland through the stinger. The stinger has barbs on it and on the inside of the sheath so that when activated they move alternately up and down, working the stylus into the wound.

But, if the insect is dead none of the mechanisms can work in order to get stung.

Ticks are actually not an insect but an arachnid. They are ectoparasites that feed on blood of mammals and as many know, transmits Lyme disease. My youngest sister, who is quite afraid of all things arachnid and even kept a score card on her wall in her room of all the spiders she killed, impressed me this Thanksgiving when she managed to pull those three ticks off of the dog. All three were pulled intact, just like a pro.

I don’t think she would have been so diligent in the process had she known they were related to spiders

And while she wasn’t scared the same could not be said for my great hunting dog.