Becoming a gardener changed my relationship with wasps. They like to hang out on sunflowers and other tall flowers, waiting to mess up some pests.

In my entomology class, everyone was assigned a taxonomic family of insect to do a presentation on. I landed on ichneumonidae, a large family of parasitoid wasps that I already adored. I think I ended off the presentation with something like "I love wasps, even the scary ones, and I need you to love wasps too".

Everyone always jokes about hating wasps, but I, for one, truly love them. They're decent pollinators, great pest control, and are fascinating to watch and learn about.

Your work helps illuminate the tremendous beauty of the insect world. I started to respect these creatures more after becoming your subscriber. Thanks!

I'm a huge wasp fan. Even the "scary" ones, as long as they're not nesting in a problematic location, are fine with me. So much pest control and pollination. And those Braconid cocoons on the hornworm caterpillar are a gardeners best friend!

I used to be really afraid of wasps (an early childhood memory where I stepped on a nest and didn’t realize until they all started stinging me-the first sting was right in the perineum). I hated wasps. But in recent years I’ve been looking at every living thing as the magnificent creature it is. I never would’ve guessed that insects can exhibit personalities! As far as wasps, now if there’s one stuck inside a café, climbing the window looking for a way out, I’ll let it crawl on my hand and I’ll take it outside. The relationship totally changed. They can be so gentle, so adorable.

Wasps are one of my favorite insect groups. Theyre so fascinating and important as both pest control and pollination. We dont realize how much they do for us and their ecosystems by removing a percentage of plant eating insects. Theyre so beautiful and diverse and fascinating. And mostly chill! I spend a lot of time observing them in my yard for fun, and ive yet to be stung. My favorite groups are probably Sphecids and Mutillids, but there are many many amazing and beautiful wasps out there. Edit: this is like the most Wasp-positive comments section ive ever seen! Heck yeah!

I think the “scary” wasps are fascinating too- they’re cool in the same way birds of prey are, efficient hunters on a tiny scale. I work in gardens inches from flowers swarming with hunting and nectaring wasps, and I’ve never been stung. Beautiful video work, people don’t realize the beautiful colors and stunning iridescent, cellophane like wings that these insects have. And they’ve come up with so many ingenious adaptations and life histories to survive in the ecosystem!

The black and white patterning of that wood wasp is gorgeous! The white floppy antennae, big round eyes and endearingly clumsy takeoff make it look kind of cute.

great video, there aren't nearly enough people out there who highlight the beauty, diversity, and intricacies of wasps

Wasps are amazing. You got me taking a closer look in our garden. 17 different species so far. Some large (Great Golden Digger) and some small (Blue Eyed Ensing). Thanks

I love wasps! They are just amazing. Really wish more people could see that.

Wasps feel like the bug version of those angry lookin modern angular cars with v8 engines and road-raging impatient drivers

If you get a wasp in your house. Found the best and easiest way to deal with them is to stand by an open door/window, snap twice about a second apart, and then quickly point out.

wasps are one of my favorite groups of insects. they've always been special to me. i had the honor of watching a paper wasp building her nest recently, i just sat and watched for hours. absolutely beautiful and intelligent creatures.

Simply fascinating! I'd love to see damselflies and dragonflies in flight!

It hasn't accoured to me that wasps could be this beautiful

Wasps are by far my favorite insects and always have been since I watched a mud dauber emerge from its mud cocoon after feeding on a stunned spider its thoughtful mother packed away for lunch, sedated and ready to be consumed alive.

It’s so cute the way they raise their arms when they took off flying

Amazing shots! Our crew got on camera wasps that live in symbiosis with figs. The tree depends on the wasp to pollinate its flowers, but in return, it offers a hidden place for the insect to lay its eggs. The footage is incredible!

Learning about wasps was why I decided to pursue entomology in the first place. beautiful video showing off one of natures most beautiful beings. Also I got called the wasp whisperer at my part time job and I'm rolling with it

I so very much enjoy your videos. They are wonder-fully done and opening up a whole new world for my exploration. I am enormously grateful.❤

you have changed my view on insects completly, i am very grateful!!!

One of my most cherished entomological moments was seeing a whole bunch of giant ichneumon wasps ovipositing into an old dead tree with pigeon horntail holes. Their ovipositors are so insanely long, to get them positioned right to go into the tree, they have to suck the ovipositor out of its sheath and coil it up inside their abdomen, where it stretches out a yellow membrane. Once they've finished ovipositing, the whole process starts over again as they coil up the ovipositor to pull it out of the trunk. Best hour I ever spent staring at a tree! I was also excited to see the Trogus, as I have a special fondness for them. I've reared quite a few spicebush swallowtail caterpillars and gotten Trogus sp. wasps out of them twice. They are truly elegant and as lovely as the butterflies!

I watch this one wasp that likes to pick up spiders and fly up to a tree, it always goes to the same spot because there are so many spiders. The spiders dart away into hiding spots but with persistence the wasp catches one

Bald-faced hornets are gentle away from their nest. I have videos and pics of me getting D. maculata to crawl around on my hand after persistently putting my fingers in front of them- on my FB page. I've never been stung doing this. They keep invertebrates feeding on plants in balance and are an important part of the web of life. The Hymenoptera are my favorite insects because I'm a plant guy. They're interconnected whether they protect and pollenate, of feed on on them- like sawflies and gall wasps. edit: spelling

I've had very bad experiences with wasps when I was a kid but I still can't help loving them. I just think they are really neat.

Where I work, I am very open for my love and fascination of wasps. I even managed to convince some people theyre cute. One person dismissed them as wannabees, but then I told him that its most likely the other way around, in that bees are wannawasps. It was enjoyable to see everyones reactions. I hate autocorrect

suuuper cool. over time wasps are really growing on me more and more with how diverse they are

I love how they fly by doing a little hop and throwing their arms up into the air, then flailing them around

I found your channel in studio research. I've only recently become interested and I'm blown away! Yours is the most amazing closeup footage of a bald faced hornet I've seen and I've got quite a bit of it. So cool! Thanks for this.

Most "pest" wasps over here (western Europe), are pests because they occasionaly sting during foraging. I got over my fear of wasps by feeding them and moving slowly, and predictable. Works exactly the same way with wild horses, funnily enough. If you get scared, and move fast, you might be seen as a threat. Move slow and confident, and they won't harm you. If you are allergic, take care, and a epipen. I've got a small pupae cabinet, of Aglais Io butterflies, probably infected by parasitoid wasps. Would have liked them to grow up as butterflies, but they have become food. Got stung by the nettles, which I foraged for food. Such is nature. And life as a whole.

I’m always elated when someone makes educational content about wasps. So many people think of wasps like yellowjackes as just bees that are mean for no reason, but they’re a really beautiful and diverse group of insects People might find parasites scary, but I find it super cool how each species has adapted to target very specific hosts, sometimes choosing only a single other species to lay their eggs.

As a few year Polistes paper wasp keeper, I indeed appreciate them on another level

Wasps are amazing and interesting insects and i even think they are cute. Sadly most people are scared of them and therefore want to get rid of them. Those insects deserve more love.

I love wasps and I love this comment section! Thank you for making this video and filming all of them, it's incredible to watch!

This is so freaking cool! Thanks for sharing it with us. I'm learning more about the food web all the time. Such great footage, too. Sharing this one for sure!

2:31 I love this shot of a wood wasp failing to properly take off and just completely flipping on its back.

My mom has somehow made friends with the wasps around her house. When she goes to garden they follow her around and land on/around her and just watch what she's doing. They've figured out that her funky human activities stir up things for them to eat! An unfortunate side effect is that they're now very friendly and curious of people and will come buzz you when you walk around outside. Scary at first, but they generally get the message if you shoo them off. Social insects are way more intelligent and amazing than I think humans even realize!

Amazing! I love the body structure of wasps, there's so many variations. I lived in Arizona for a while and I managed to see a few tarantula hawks which are massive and kind of intimidating, but very beautiful. I also love mud daubers, they are strange looking and build nests out of clay which is fascinating to me. Thanks for your videos!

I have been doing too much reading about wasps lately. Truly a fascinating insects. This video could not have been better timed for me!

The filming is beautifully done.

I loved that the bald faced hornet was keeping one foot on the ground while still flying. Also that middle leg jumper was so cool!

Thanks to your video my swat away reflexes towards wasps will be a lot less now!

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE WASPS!!!!! THANK YOU FOR THIS!

I legit love wasps. So diverse and interesting.

Amazing motion captures. Thanks for sharing!

Just such top notch stuff as always!

thank you so much for the hard work you put into these videos! I can't imagine the hours involved in collecting specimens and lining up great shots

So cool! I still find them a bit unsettling but also fascinating

Holy shit, you filmed this? - Amazing work! Insects are sooooo interesting! Ants BLOW MY MIND, for example!

Beautifully informative video! Keep up the great work

I love this channel. Thanks for filming all of these creatures.

Wasps are my favorite category of animal! They're incredibly endearing to me, like a cross between the 'cool' factor of a motorcycle and the 'cute' factor of a kitten. Their often disturbing life cycle only adds to my fascination.

Excellent video and information. I also am a Wasp fan and in Minnesota we have the Great Black Wasps that are considered a pollinator and feed on nectar.

I love watching and learning new things with you. This is a great channel to watch. Thank you for your hard work.

Everytime one of these videos comes out I am excited to see it!

I keep getting blown away with all these creations of life😄 I never knew there even was a wingless wasp until now. For me I let these help me to learn how to stay calm & then project my energy on to the wasp. I haven't been stung by a wasp or was it a bee? - in over 16 years now. I'm still learning to identify these flying & jumping creatures 😊

Thoroughly enjoyed this video. Might be my favorite one yet!!

Wow! I didn’t know sawflies were at all related to bees, wasps or ants despite them being hymenopterans. Also, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the slo-no shots you get to capture! Truly amazing and unique stuff!!

I love your videos. Both for the educational value and the entertainment. Keep them coming.😊

Beautiful video! The more I learn about wasps, the more I love them. Videos like these are great for education and spreading awareness of the underestimated value wasps have to offer. I'm also loving the wasp love in this comment section!

Wow that's some amazing footage. Great video.

I just love your channel!

gotta appreciate this guy for being brave enough to shrink himself and film these wasps for us

I love your videos, seeing these videos of insects taking off is so fun. Thank you!

thank you very much for these works and for sharing this with me!!!

I've seen tons of wasps in my yard since going native, but no colonies. They've also never bothered me, even when I'm mowing and they were in the grass.

An interesting one I found out about last year is the spider eating wasp. I have a mason bee house, and the spider eating wasp uses the same type of hole/tube that the mason bee uses - there were several in my mason bee house last year. It's another solitary wasp and places it's eggs in a tube along with dead spiders for the young to feed on before creating a cocoon to come out of the next spring. They are actually good pollinators, so I don't have a problem with them using the tubes alongside the mason bees.

I live in Australia and most of the ones you see here are solitary and no joke. Prime example; we were sitting outside on the grass for a class once, when the teacher derailed the whole lesson to say "wtf is that thing doing" and have the entire class stop to watch a wasp the size of my index finger dragging a spider the size of my hand through the middle of the area we were sitting in. It had paralysed the spider and was presumably taking it off to lay it's eggs in the still living spider. Nature is metal, wasps particularly so.

i specially love the shot of the first wasp, its amazing how you can see it's torax deform as it flaps it's wings

I studied entomology and love wasps, but I was once attacked by a nest of yellow jackets while doing fisheries field work. I was carrying a large bundle of long-handled nets down a steep hillside and the handles hit near a nest. The wasps immediately swarmed me as I struggled to clamber back up the bank and then I ran down the road to get as far from the nest as possible. I was wearing a ponytail and they were inside my hair biting and stinging my head and neck. I had on chest waders so they got stuck down my waders stinging. Had a 90-minute drive on dirt roads to the hospital for a shot of Benedryl. I was sick the next day and my face was swollen and it looked like I had been punched in the eye. I'm ultra sensitive to the sound of humming wasps and bees now, that's for sure. 😂 Massive respect for them. 🐝

I can't say I'm a wasp lover like all these other comments, but I do love nature, and wasps are a very important part of that, as is every species. When I was younger, I somehow managed to gain an irrational fear of bees from a horror movie. That very quickly became an irragional fear of any flying insect of that body type and size simply because they moved so fast and I could never distinguish them. I got a lot better over the years but I still get jumpy if something buzzes nearby and I don't see it. Even still though, I love nature, and insects. I actually really love bees now too, but wasps are still super intimidating to me. Still, I love learning about them, so long as it's behind some sort of screen or barrier. They're fascinating creatures, most parasites are.

*Summary:* - *Bald-faced hornet:* Social wasp, lives in colonies, defends its nest with a venom-injecting stinger. - *Braconid wasp:* Solitary parasitoid, lays eggs in or on a host insect, larvae feed off and eventually kill the host. - *Tobacco Hornworm Parasitoid:* Wasp larvae live inside the caterpillar, emerge as cocoons, and then as adult wasps. - *Sawfly:* Ancestral group to all ants, bees, and wasps; larvae feed on plants, no constricted waist. - *Wood Wasp:* Lays eggs in dying trees, larvae bore into wood. - *Aulacid wasp:* Parasitizes wood-borne insects like wood wasps and beetles. - *Hamuli:* Hooks on the hindwing that attach to the forewing, common in all ants, bees, and wasps. - *Ichneumonid wasps:* Largest family of wasps, parasitize spiders and butterflies. - *Wingless jumping parasitoid:* Uses middle legs for high-powered jumps, rare and found in leaf litter.

First time seeing one of your videos. Instant sub. This kind of content is what the internet should be about. Amazing!

Beautiful. Thank you for the careful presentation.

Wasps are some of my favorite insects, especially the social ones. My favorite species is Polistes dominula, the European paper wasp. They have such striking colors and a masklike pattern on their backs. And I love how they dangle their back legs as they fly. That's just so weird and it makes them very recognizable. A neat thing about some social wasps is that they recognize each other's faces. Each wasp face is slightly different, so that they can tell each other apart. In one study, when scientists painted over their face patterns, their nestmates attacked them because they didn't recognize them anymore. There's a lot more to them than most people realize. I recently encountered a blackjacket nest. I was walking along on a sidewalk, minding my own business, when suddenly I was surrounded by black flying insects. After a moment I realized they were wasps, and there were a lot of them going in and out of a hole in a rock wall, just a few feet away from me. They were checking me out, I think. They looked agitated, swooping around wildly... so I just kinda backed away very slowly, and the farther away I got, the less of them were swarming around me. Then I just walked away. I didn't run, I just went a different way. I didn't get stung even once. Social wasps really don't deserve the reputation they have. I can understand being afraid of them or not liking them, but I can't stand it when people suggest that they're malicious. I startled those blackjackets but they didn't sting me. I've watched paper wasps build their nests from a few feet away and they left me alone. I haven't been stung since I was a kid, even though I get up really close when I watch them. They just mistake humans for threats sometimes, and respond with the best defense that they have. sorry for the textdump, wasps are just one of my special interests

Superb, thanks for your work.

I had been observing and photographing a large bald faced hornets' nest at head height in a holly tree for a couple of months until someone deliberately destroyed it. It was fascinating to see how the outside structure evolved as the colony grew. I had taken photographs from directly in front of the entrance with no negative interactions. As you might imagine, I was very sorry when someone destroyed their home. All that I can say, is that I hope the perpetrator(s) got thoroughly stung for their pointless action.

This is fabulous! I am studying wasps and bees and their relationships to native plants in our backyards and I finally have heard first hand how to pronounce ichneumonid!!

This was incredible, I had no idea what a huge portion of global wasp diversity are parasitoid wasps. It amazes me that so many of these species have a unique relationship with a single family or species of plant or insect that they depend on for successful feeding and reproduction. It reminds me of the dynamic pollinator/plant relationships that we often observe in nature. Great video!

The holes in the caterpillar, and then especially a full-grown wasp emerging from that cocoon... it just feels so "wrong" in a way. Truly terrifying. I've known about parasitoids for a while but that just sent the message home. All the parasitoid wasps I've seen once emerged from some host like that...

thank you so much for this video. i am scared of wasps and hornets but seeing how they usually are just super cool parasitoids is relieving. some of them are actually really cute too. okay now i love wasps.

I have a wasps nest outside my front door, they don't bother us at all, never been stung, they just do their thing we love them.

That was fascinating, great video

I love how they all put their front arms up in the air when they take off, like "YAAAAY LET'S FLYYYYYY!"

Excellent, very well done.

Totally amazing!!!

Wasps have velcro wings? haha, that's cool. I once heard someone say that for every single insect species there is at least one parasitoid wasp specificly evolved to lay its eggs in that species. Not sure if that's true, but there sure are a whole damn lot of wasp species!

Amazing detail

Incredible as usual

theyre so adorable

I had the luxury of having a yellowjacket nest growing right in my windowsill this Summer. They operated for around two-ish months and only just died off now. One by one, they shown up less. Eventually, over the weekend, there were only two wasps left just hanging out on my window over the night then since vanished. All that remains, is the vacant nest with one wasp seemingly dead inside of it, some reason. Was very cool observing their daily routines and watching them expand from one worker to twenty of them. It was rather sad seeing them vanish one by one, though

Great stuff! Thanks.

Awesome watching the wings...

Pretty amazing, thanks!

They’re so cute up close!

I noticed Prionyx specimens in my yard recently, and noticed that they also seem to seek out nectar from native flowers.

Sawflies are cute. They look so happy to be taking to the air lol

That was awesome. I learned a lot thanks