fbpx

KidsKonnect

Wasp Facts & Worksheets

Wasps are extroverted colony insects with a sting and a slender waist.

Search for Worksheets

Worksheets /Science /Wasp Facts & Worksheets
Premium
Not ready to purchase a subscription? Click to download the free sample version   Download sample

With over 30,000 recognized species, wasps represent a remarkably diverse range of insects.  Wasps are extroverted insects with a sting and a slender waist. They build paper nests out of wood pulp and feed insects to the larvae to raise them.

See the fact file below for more information on Wasp, or you can download our 31-page Wasp worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

Wasp Colonies 

  • Like honeybee colonies, each wasp colony is headed by a single fertile queen who produces all the colony’s eggs. 
  • Like honeybees, wasps have a caste system in which the females are called workers and the males are called drones. Like the bumblebee, the young, mated queen overwinters, emerges by herself in the spring, and establishes the colony from scratch.
  • There are two types of wasp species: social and solitary. 
  • Social wasps live in colonies, which can number in the thousands, as their name suggests. All tasks within the nest are carried out by female workers in these colonies. 
  • Solitary wasps have no colonies since they live alone. They deposit eggs but don’t interfere with the hatching process.
  • All wasps construct large nests with numerous six-sided compartments. 
  • Wasps construct their nests out of a special kind of paper that they produce by chewing plant and wood fibers. 
  • The nests are used to shield the young and to lay eggs in.
  • Many wasp species live alone, however others reside in groups (known as colonies) and cooperate. 
  • Three classes of social wasps exist: queens (big females that construct the nest and lay the eggs), workers (small females that construct the nest and care for the young), and drones (males).
  • Drones remain in the nest and do not work nearly as much as worker wasps because their sole goal is to mate with the queens.
  • All wasps perish each winter except for newly mated queens, who hide in dirt or leaves to survive.
  • Predatory wasps hunt down and consume other insects and animals, often using the carcasses as nourishment for their larvae.
  • Parasitic wasps typically lay their eggs inside the bodies of creatures that are alive, such as spiders or caterpillars. 
  • The larvae consume the live host. As biological control agents, wasps can help manage other pests, especially in agriculture. 
  • Numerous wasps act as pollinators by consuming floral nectar while also feeding on it.
  • Some wasp species are aggressive and may sting when provoked. Wasps, as opposed to honeybees, can often sting many times.

Wasp Life Cycle and Taxonomy 

  • Common name: Wasp
  • Scientific name: Hymenoptera
  • Diet: Omnivore
  • Group name: Colony
  • Size: Up to 1.5 inches
  • The queen of some species will lay unfertilized eggs in the late summer. These will grow to be males.
  • These fertilized females will spend the winter in a safe area. 
  • The remainder of the colony will often die when winter arrives. 
  • The queen will begin laying eggs the following spring. 
  • They lay fertilized eggs, which hatch into workers who construct the nest and care for the queen’s larvae.

Types of Wasp

  • The two main groupings of wasps are social and solitary. 
  • There are only approximately a thousand species of social wasps, including powerful colony builders like yellow jackets and hornets.
  • Every spring, a queen from a social wasp colony that was fertilized the year before and spent the winter hibernating in a warm location begins a new colony from scratch. 
  • When she first appears, she constructs a modest nest and raises a starter brood of female worker insects. 
  • The queen then continues to lay eggs in the numerous six-sided compartments that these workers construct as they take over the nest’s expansion. 
  • A colony may contain more than 5,000 members by the end of the summer, but all of them – including the founding queen – die off in the winter.
  • Only newly fertilized queens endure the winter so that the process can begin again in spring.
  • Many wasp species, known as solitary wasps, do not form colonies.
  • The group consists of some of the largest members of the wasp family, such as the impressive blue-and-orange tarantula hawks and cicada killers, both of which can grow to be 1.5 inches long. 
  • Stinging solitary wasps use their venom to hunt, in contrast to social wasps, which only use their stingers for defense.

Wasp Anatomy 

  • There is a lot of variety in wasp anatomy among different species. Wasps have a strong exoskeleton covering their three major body components, like all insects. 
  • The head, mesosoma, and metasoma are the names of these components. Wasps have two jointed antennae, six jointed legs, and powerful jaws. 
  • Wasps have a pair of compound eyes as well as numerous simple eyes, or ocelli.
  • These are usually grouped in a triangle arrangement right in front of the vertex, a part of the head.
  • The slender “waist”, known as a petiole, that divides the abdomen from the thorax and the pointed lower abdomens of wasps helps to distinguish them from bees.
  • Wasps have four translucent wings. At the tip of their abdomen, many females have a stinger.
  • Wasps come in almost every color of the rainbow; however, we are most familiar with the black-and-yellow or brown varieties. 

Diets of Wasps 

  • Wasps typically feed only on nectar as adults and parasites as larvae. Although it is not very common, some wasps are omnivores. They eat a variety of food that has fallen to the ground, nectar, and carrion. Numerous wasps are predators that feed on other insects. To feed their young, some social wasp species, including yellowjackets, rummage for dead insects. 
  • The adults receive delicious secretions from the brood in return.
  • The first meal is usually provided by the animal the parent wasp exploited as a host for its larvae in parasitic wasp species.
  • In a similar way to honey bees, adult male wasps will occasionally visit flowers in search of nectar to dine on.
  • Some species, like yellowjackets, occasionally break into honey bee nests and take the honey and young.
  • Wasp parasitism is widespread. Some species, such as scoliid wasps, deposit their eggs in caterpillars or beetle grubs. The host animal is devoured from the inside out while the eggs grow. 

Characteristics of Wasps 

  • Most animals avoid stinging wasps out of a well-founded dread of them. 
  • Animals that inadvertently come across a wasp colony or have the boldness to destroy a nest will be swamped in a hurry. 
  • A social wasp in distress releases a pheromone that causes colony members nearby to become aggressive and sting in defense. 
  • Wasps can sting repeatedly, unlike bees. Stingers, which are modified egg-laying organs, are only seen on females.
  • All wasps create nests. Wasps build their familiar papery homes from wood fibers scraped with their rough mandibles and chewed into a pulp, unlike bees which produce a waxy substance to build their nests.
  • Wasps are omnivores, in contrast to honeybees. 
  • Like yellow jackets, they consume both plant-based foods and animal meat. 
  • They also give insects to larvae as “meat” to their offspring. They are brutal and determined scavengers.
  • Wasps will consume grasshoppers, ladybugs, and even bees, but they provide an important function and belong in the natural environment.
  • Thousands of wasps are released onto farmland in some agricultural systems to combat crop pests.
  • Wasps use tree bark to construct their papery homes. 
  • They remove the bark from specific trees, chew it up, mix it with some enzymes, and then regurgitate it as pulp to build their nests.
  • The only continent where wasps don’t exist is Antarctica.
  • Yellow jackets have a strong sense of connection, which explains why they can be aggressive and defensive at times, especially in the late summer and early fall when there aren’t many food sources.
  • Wasps rarely attack unless provoked, unlike yellow jackets. 
  • Yellow jackets may grow irritated by you simply walking close to them, whereas wasps usually leave you alone if you do the same with them.

Ecological Effects 

  • Wasps are incredibly helpful to humans, despite the occasionally overwhelming terror they can cause. 
  • Some kind of wasp preys on almost every nuisance insect on Earth, either as a source of food or as a host for its parasitic larvae.
  • Wasps are so effective in reducing pest populations that the agricultural sector now frequently uses them to safeguard crops. 
  • Wasps eat many insects that are harmful to gardens, such as aphids.
  • By reducing pest insect populations, wasps’ impact on people is significantly more positive than negative.

Wasp Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle that includes everything you need to know about the Wasp across 31 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use worksheets that are perfect for teaching kids about Wasps, extroverted insects with a sting and a slender waist.

Complete List of Included Worksheets

Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document.

  1. Wasp Facts
  2. Look Out
  3. Executing Knowledge
  4. Wasp My Meaning? 
  5. Part of Me
  6. Difference Check
  7. Evolution of Life
  8. Know Me Better 
  9. Complete Me
  10. Wasp on Your Mind?
  11. Wasp Colony 

Frequently Asked Questions

Are wasps and bees the same?

Bees and wasps are frequently mistaken for one another since they have similar profiles. Wasp abdomens, on the other hand, contain distinct yellow/black bands around the midsection, whereas honey bees are social insects that dwell in a colony and may include several thousand workers.

Do wasps make honey?

Out of the innumerable wasp species, only seventeen are classified as ‘honey wasps’, which store nectar and honeydew in order to feed their colony during difficult foraging periods. This type of saved nectar is more commonly known as ‘honey’.

What are wasps good for?

Not only do wasps kill caterpillars, flies, crickets, and other pests that ruin crops; but they also feed these animals to their young. In this way, wasps serve an important purpose in the life cycle.

Link/cite this page

If you reference any of the content on this page on your own website, please use the code below to cite this page as the original source.

Link will appear as Wasp Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, September 14, 2022

Use With Any Curriculum

These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.

Related Resources