Exploring Mutualities and Multiplicities with Paper Wasps

One day when I was a little girl, I was standing on the sidewalk outside of our house waiting for my mom so we could leave. I was gleefully entertaining myself with a game of stomp the ants, specifically red ants because they deliver painful stings. When my mom finally came outside, she asked what I was doing. I said, “killing these ants.” She looked at me with a type of disapproval I had never seen from her before and said, “Stop that, those are God’s ants.” It’s not as if my mom was completely averse to killing a bug or spider, so on some level it became instantly apparent to me that she was dismayed by my outright joyful abuse of power. The violence of it hit me, and I burst into deeply repentant tears. To this day, I have a deep-seated aversion to killing bugs. It worked out, however, because although my mom didn’t intend to do it by making me feel so badly, she gave me the lifelong gift of de-centering my immediate convenience in my relationships with creepy-crawlies. In return, it’s opened my world to observations I might otherwise have missed. I once had the pleasure of watching an orb-weaver spider scuttle round and round in a spiral weaving her web. To my amazement, when she finished, she went straight to the center of her creation and proceeded to ritualistically stick each leg in her “mouth”, one after the other as if to clean them. We don’t even know what we don’t know, not to mention what precious information we have inadvertently destroyed! 

Just a few years ago, ornithologist, Christopher Heckscher, published his revelation that birds in Delaware known as Veeries seem to be better predictors of the severity and timing of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season than our most sophisticated weather modeling systems.[1] He discovered this after two decades of watching these diminutive creatures in order to figure out why they begin migrating to Brazil at a different time each year. After running through every variable he could surmise, he was struck with the wild, now seemingly correct, idea that maybe it had to do with variances in the optimal time for traversing the ocean based on the start of hurricane season. 

This past summer, I experienced the height of both my insect-inspired joy and peer disapproval when I would not remove a paper wasp nest from my front porch. I annoyed a friend, a repair person, and a relative who all felt that I was jeopardizing their safety over some foolishness, but I had been watching and photographing them for months during which time they never offered to hurt me. I was overwhelmed by their durational performance of care for their nest as they worked in community nearly around the clock. Furthermore, I learned in my research that paper wasps are pollinators, recognize one another as individuals by their unique facial features,[2] and apparently hold some understanding of the transitive property of mathematics.[3] They were most definitely aware of me, but we seemed to have an understanding: we had a mutual concern for the safety of our young and a mutual interest in going about our business in peace. One day when we were standing on the front porch, one of the wasps flew by my daughter’s head on its way to a nearby bush where they liked to collect food. My daughter was startled and so she screamed. The wasps froze, but they didn’t attack. From that point on, however, they stopped working every time we came outside. 

Then one day, something changed. I believe they may have been threatened by a person making deliveries because there was a package dropped off right under their nest. The next two people who came to the door were greeted by the infantry and left with multiple stings. Over the next few days, two more people, myself included, were also stung. I will say that in those last two instances all the wasps, save one, had settled down. This “head of security” would fly low anytime one of us came outside. If we tarried too long, which is what I did fumbling with my keys, we were stung. At this point even I was feeling a little ridiculous creeping in and out of my own front door or going around to the back to accommodate them. I decided to try to re-home them. I ordered a cheap bee suit and watched a lot of YouTube tutorials. 

A bolder friend than me wore the bee suit, but to make a long story short, our relocation attempt was a failure. The wasps abandoned their nest and started building another one higher up on the house. That solved one problem, but there were larvae on the nest they evacuated. I felt culpable. I tried to ignore the feeling, after all everyone had been right about the outcome of my trial cohabitation. People had gotten hurt. Besides, I knew nothing about caring for wasps and in my human ignorance and sentimentality might prolong their suffering. Still, I could not get the hungry baby wasps out of my mind. Finally, after two days, I went outside and got them. I began feeding the larvae honey from a Q-tip. They ate it and even learned that when I turned on my desk lamp, that meant feeding time and would begin to wriggle around in anticipation. The smallest larvae and the eggs all died, but one of the mature larvae survived and cocooned! I named her Iva, because it rhymes with the Spanish word for wasp, avispa.

I had noticed before that the adult wasps would tap the tops of the cocoons with their front legs, so every day I would tap on the outside of Iva’s cell with my finger to let her know I was there. Remarkably she would respond by pulsating back at me from inside her cocoon. This went on for a couple of weeks until she finally emerged. She stared at me and did an elaborate and mesmerizing dance involving abdominal wagging and lateral vibrations. No one knows for sure what wasps are communicating through this body language, but most scientists believe it has something to do with communicating with their young. I decided to release her. It was a risk, but I knew that she wouldn’t be happy in isolation. Maybe outside she would join her colony. It was bittersweet to watch her go, but several nights later I noticed a wasp on the outside of my window. I’m not sure if it was Iva, but this wasp had the same thin brown stripe down the middle of her face and the same unusual smokey gray wings (rather than the typical rust-colored ones) that Iva had. We stared at each other for about five minutes. I tapped the glass rhythmically with my finger. She responded with abdominal wagging. 

[1] Andy McGlashen, “Are These Birds Better Than Computers at Predicting Hurricane Seasons?,” Audubon, August 13, 2019, https://www.audubon.org/news/are-these-birds-better-computers-predicting-hurricane-seasons.

[2] Brian Handwerk, “Wasps Can Recognize Faces: Social Species Relies on Recognition to Keep the Peace, Study Suggests.,” National Geographic, December 3, 2011, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/111202-wasps-people-faces-recognition-insects-science-animals.

[3] “Paper Wasps Capable of Behavior That Resembles Logical Reasoning,” ScienceDaily, May 8, 2019, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190508093708.htm.