FREE Webinar on Bees, Wasps & Hornets- September 4, 2015

2015 All Bugs Good and Bad Webinar Series

Is it a wasp, a bee, or a hornet?  Why do I care?  Dr. Charles Ray of Auburn University will explain the difference between these creatures, and give practical tips for preventing hornets, yellow jackets and other wasps from ruining your next picnic. 

Moderated by David Koon  and Lucy Edwards, Regional Extension Agents, Alabama Cooperative Extension System. 

Click here to login as a guest and participate in the live event.   Note: on October 2, the link to the live webinar opens about 15 minutes before the webinar.  If you try to log in earlier, you will get an error message. 

For more webinars in this series, see All Bugs Good and Bad 2015 Webinar Series. The webinars are brought to you by the following eXtension Communities of Practice: Imported Fire Ants, and Urban IPM; and by the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and the University of Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture.

When: September 4, 2015 1 PM Central
Where: online webinar (you can learn in your jammies!)

Cicada killers

Cicada exoskeleton.

Have you seen any cicada exoskeletons (they look like Garthim from Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal) lately? I found one near my front porch last week.  This time of year, with the cicadas (and their noise) come the topic of today's post- cicada killers.  These large wasps can be startling to see when they fly around trees or low over the lawn.  They reach about 1.5 inches in length with dusky wings, reddish-brown thorax and a yellow and black abdomen.

Cicada killer wasp.

Females are pretty docile, but males are territorial and will fly at you until you leave their area.  Only female wasps (and bees) can sting as the stinger is a modified egg-laying structure.  The female cicada killers create burrows in the ground and then go off to sting cicadas.  The cicadas are paralyzed by the sting and taken by the wasp back to the burrow where she digs a side tunnel, crams in the cicada and lays an egg on it.  When the egg hatches, it will feed on the cicada provided.

That being said, cicada killers can be considered beneficial as they help to cut down on the cicada population.  They can also be considered a pest since sometimes people will have holes all over the yard from the wasps' tunneling behavior.  If you fall into the latter category and want to do something to manage the population, you can sprinkle a insecticidal dust over the holes and tamp it down with your shoe.

Are you seeing holes in your lawn?

I've been getting calls about small holes in people's lawns that are surrounded by the piled up dirt from the hole. These holes are most likely caused by cicada killers, a type of solitary wasp.

Cicada killers are large wasps reaching a length of about 1.5 inches. The wasps have a reddish-brown head and thorax and a black and yellow marked abdomen. The wings are brownish.

Since the wasps are so large, people are often worried about their sting. Females are capable of stinging, males are not. Males are territorial and will often fly near humans walking through an area; this could be to intimidate you and have you get out of their territory or it could be that they need to check if you are a female cicada killer ready to mate. Either way, if you keep to your business they will keep to theirs. Females, while capable of stinging, are not aggressive.

Females dig burrows in the ground where they take cicadas that they paralyze with their sting. The cicadas are placed into chambers off of the main burrow and then an egg is laid in the chamber. When the egg hatches, the larvae consumes the cicada(s) provided for them.

Control really isn't necessary for these wasps.