Bicyrtes quadrifasciatus digging a burrow | Stoddard Co., Missouri

Here is an animated gif that I made from a series of photographs of the digger wasp, Bicyrtes quadrifasciatus (ID courtesy of Doug Yanega), digging a burrow in a sand bank in extreme southeastern Missouri (it’s amazing what you can do with an iPhone and a free internet app!). A large number of these wasps had colonized the sand bank, and as I photographed this one individual busily digging its burrow, others repeatedly flew up and investigated. The digging individual would disappear briefly down into the burrow, and each time it returned to the surface with a fresh load of sand another wasp would fly up to it and investigate. The digging individual never seemed to pay much attention to the investigating wasp, so I’m not sure if these other wasps were looking for a potential mate or perhaps even trying to usurp the burrow.

The cumulative noise from all of the flying wasps was really quite remarkable—indeed, the noise is what drew my attention to the sand bank in the first place. A video of the colony with my commentary can be seen here. I did see one wasp that had returned to its burrow carrying prey (apparently a stink bug in the family Pentatomidae). I touched the wasp thinking that it would drop the prey and fly away, as another digger wasp, Cerceris fumipennis, does with its buprestid prey when disturbed. This would have given me a chance to confirm the prey identity. Unfortunately, the wasp kept hold of the prey and flew off with it.

© Ted C. MacRae 2014