Social wasp Vespa sp.
1988
Sirinee Poonchiasri (Department of Agriculture, Bangkok (Thailand). Entomology and Zoology Div. Taxonomy and Acarology Research Group)
Vespa tropica and Vespa affinis were widespreadly found througout the country, whereas Vespa velutina, Vespa basalis, Vespa bicolor, Vespa binghami and Vespa mendarinia were mountaineous in distribution confining themselves in the North and the Northeast of the country, while Vespa multimaculata and Vespa mocsaryana were found only in the Southern part. Biology of Vespa affinis was revealed that the wasp lived in highly evolved social life. A "queen nest" of an inverted jug-liked was constructed by a single queen. In the initial stage the queen did all duties of egg laying, carrying of the youngs and repairing the nest. After the first generation of workers was produced, the newcomers would take over all these duties leaving her to only egg laying. Before the nest was abandoned, males were produced for mating with the new queens. Inside a nest, there were a number of disc-shaped layers of hexagonal cell called combs laying above and attached to one another by stalks. A nest was wholly covered by an envelope leaving a small entrace hole. The life cycle of the wasp was a complete metamorphosis having all 4 stages of egg, larva, pupa and adult. Eggs were elongate, pale and transparent. They were laid at the bottom of the downward-projecting hexagonal cell. Egg stage was 5-8 days, larval stage 28-35 days, and pupal stage 17-22 days. The period from the starting to the leaving of the nest took 12-15 months.
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