#wickedwaspweek

This dark-eyed, devil-colored, Visigoth is from ... Arkansas, ready to ride the winds of Halloween seeking insect revenge for all the innocent insect lives lost to bug sprays. Careful out there.

Wicked Wasp Week #13. If you ever visit Guantanamo Bay (full of all sorts of lovely dry scrub with cacti taller than a house!) you might turn a corner and meet Hoplisoides xerophilus, I hope you are ready.

Wicked Wasp Week #6. Zanysson - A crabronid wasp. Most of the stinging wasps are fairly badass in aspect, to use a technical term. This one certainly is worthy of a tattoo on someone's chest and was collected by Merle Shepherd from Spring Island along the coast of South Carolina. The group as a whole are cleptoparasites of other Crabronid wasps.

Wicked Wasp Week #10. Slowly it reaches over your bed, blood dripping from its teeth (technically: mandibles)... you, frozen in place, scream silently as the hot minty breath of the the world's largest spider wasp wakens you from your dream of becoming a phlebotomist to the stars!!!!!!!!!!!

Looking unsettled, slightly sprung in the mind, angry at the world and ready to raid a nearby village...Polistes exclamans, female, Beltsville, Maryland, Head.  A social wasp queen from early spring 2013.

Yes! More mutillids (velvet ants) here is a male from Maryland right outside the Nation's Capital. Beware! Lock your doors at night..... Feel free to download and modify on our Flickr site

Wicked Wasp Week #9.  Red as the devil, fame and fortune are nothing to this wasp, its sole mission is to hunt soft bodied creatures, pulp them, and feed them to it young.  Leave you babies inside!  Polistes metricus, female, Beltsville, Maryland