Three Brand New Baby Girls

Ahhhh, at last!  I’ve been visiting my queen wasp very regularly over the past couple of weeks.  She has been working and working and working, and making what has seemed like very slow progress on her nest.  Finally, her first daughters have been born, and so now they can get to work!

Thank you (again) to yoshizen for offering the information about these newborns.  He also warned that they are likely to be quite aggressive and will defend the nest, so I should watch out.  I am definitely being careful.  A couple of days before the female worker wasps were born, I managed to get a few interesting shots of the queen by herself.  She is easy to photograph because she is simply always hanging around the nest.  I don’t know why that surprised me.  I’ve grown quite fond of her now and am utterly fascinated by all the different ways she moves her body.  Yoshizen mentioned that the way we know she is a wasp is by her two sets of wings, which you can see in the first and third of photographs below.  In the first image, I’m almost certain she is smiling at me. 😀