a hawthorn sapling near me was covered in Nematus lucidus larvae this spring, so i had a steady supply of bald children to look at whenever i wanted. like most sawfly larvae, they like hanging out in ridiculous poses, like this one with its ass in the air

I love Tremex columba so fucking much! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

September 1st 2025.

Reveler conservation area, Canada.

I also saw one of Tremex columba's nemeses: Megarhyssa macrurus (I believe).

some galls I saw this year

top row: ram's-horn & spangle gall wasps, on oaks

I eagerly await my full iNaturalist year in review once I finish uploading all of December's photos, but I am finished with all of last year's Hymenoptera, so I've made myself a mini review just for them! Without further ado...

In comparison, in 2024 I had 548 observations of 80 species. It is a shame how few sawflies I saw, I'll have to try and seek some out next year

(Added extra labels since it's not interactive for you guys) Sooo many gall wasps this year! I actually only had one gall wasp observation before this year which is criminal, I have no clue how I didn't notice them earlier. I am the type to photograph and upload pretty much every individual of even common species I see so I end up with one william honeybees and bumblebees despite my waspy affinities

Nothing too suprising here. When it's warm the bugs are active and so am I, with the dip in May probably being because of exam season or something. Once it started getting colder there were galls everywhere so it didn't immediately dip

Along with some of my favourite observations of each from this year. We had a handful of cellophane bees nesting in our garden and they had a mating swarm going there for days. Also my first honeybee drone!

For anyone unfamiliar, lifer means a new taxon you haven't seen before. Presuming the tentative ones are correct, that would bring me up to 33 hymenoptera families overall

And now an unordered dump of some more observations from this year I haven't been able to include thus far

A cute woolly alder sawfly (Eriocampa ovata) and a bit of hym on hym violence with a sawfly larva being carried off by an ant (Formica rufa complex)

The first chalcid I was ever able to use my macro lens on and my first wasp galls of the year (ridiculously red compared to all the later ones too) (Cynips divisa)

A nomad bee (Nomada) emerging from, presumably, a mining bee nest (nomad bees parasitise mining bees) which I had noticed and decided to watch for a bit in case anything happened although I hadn't expected much. And also a very scruffy looking Clark's mining bee (Andrena clarkella) that let me get shockingly close to it

A torymid that had just finished parasitising a silk button gall and an ichneumonid larva parasitising a cucumber spider

An ichneumonid visitor to the picnic I had on my birthday, I love her subtle red patterns, and a crabronid I have to include because they're such deeply ridiculous looking animals. They weren't kidding that head can square

Andricus grossulariae and Andricus glandulae galls

My first (and so far only) beewolf (Philanthus triangulum), which are one of my favourite wasps to talk about, they have some really wacky adaptations, and Rhyssella approximator

Sycophila snooping around the oak galls, probably looking for one to parasitise, and a sleepy little nomad bee I spent a while photographing before it started properly waking up

One of my favourite photos ever hands down. I caught this little gall wasp cleaning itself and for a moment it looked like it was standing upright on two legs. Behold a man! And a gorgeous potter wasp (Delta unguiculatum)

A ladybird parasitoid wasp cocoon (Dinocampus coccinellae) and its brainwashed ladybird guard (Harmonia axyridis). Last but certainly not least, two more from this same patch of fennel that was overrun by so many species of wasps, bees and flies – Sphex pruinosus and an emerald cuckoo wasp (Stilbum cyanurum) I just barely caught, which is my profile picture here

Poison Ivy Sawfly (Arge humeralis)

August 15, 2024

Sure, I'll do the whole family!

These little guys usually are only seen between April and May across Europe, Asia, Northern Iran, and Western Siberia

The adults eat nectar and pollen, while the larvae will eat the leaves of the plants they were hatched on, those being Tansy, Wild angelica, and Hogweed, but they also have been known to occasionally eat roses (dog roses, cinnamon roses, and burnet roses), which causes them to be viewed as pests within the garden

The sawfly larvae look like this

Notice how it lives up to its name and saws right through the leaves!

My first thought after saw this fly : a most thickest and brutal looking hornet I've ever seen

Almost big as Asian giant hornet. The definition of robust!