I live in Greece and Polistes Dominula are native here, when i found her abandoned nests in the end of the season they have honey inside, do they make honey?
Hello CI. Thanks for visiting our channel all the way from Greece! We appreciate your comment as others may learn from it too. Wasps often do make a sort of honey which they create by collecting nectar from flowers, processing it, then regurgitating it back into the nest in small droplets stuck to the inner walls of the nest cells, where it is stored as food. They do the same thing with water droplets which are for keeping the nest hydrated and to cool it in the hot weather. You can see this process in one of our other videos which features a Polistes Fuscatus (Northern Paper Wasp) queen building her nest, laying eggs, and provisioning the nest with “wasp honey/nectar” and water. It’s a fascinating process to watch.
One man's pest is another keepers food source. I want to diversify my diets for micro geckos and have been trying to find info on these guys thanks for the insight. Do you know if they can cross water? I use a moat to keep isolation on pest bugs I keep.
Hi Dan S. Thanks for visiting our channel. That's a great question about whether or not booklice can cross water. We have no data on that, but we suspect they would be capable of crossing water as they are often found around water sources and they thrive in high humidity, so it would make sense that they would have evolved with that ability. If we ever see any more in our habitats we'll test them for that ability. I bet they'd float right across the surface.
@@greenwaspremoval thanks for the quick reply I will try petroleum jelly or baby powder barriers as those work with ants. Wasp nests are just going dormant in NC I will see if I can get a few and culture the book lice. I'm thinking a lattice of 1/4 inch aged wood glued together Lincoln log style with a moisture gradient bottom to top. No seeum mesh or polyester felt for vent holes.
Let us know how it goes with the booklice if you find any in your local wasp nests. Curious how prevalent that is. You'll want to obtain high res magnifier optics of some type to study these tiny beasties and get the most accurate species identification. We use magnifying glasses and microscope cams to get best imagery for study purposes (lots of inexpensive options on Amazon etc.).
Hello B860. Happy Holidays to you and yours. Yes we do sometimes use old paper wasp nests or old comb in live wasp habitats. However, all old nests must be heat treated first to remove pathogens, insects, parasites, etc. Otherwise the nest will soon become infested with various beasties that don't belong there - which is what this booklice video illustrates.
Hello yearginclarke. Thanks for your comment. Booklice are interesting insects. They are quite easy to miss with the naked eye due to their tiny size. We'd never seen them before either until we found them in an old Polistes paper wasp nest that was collected in the field, then we studied them in a couple wasp habitats last season. They are evidently quite sensitive to humidity levels and will die off inside structures when humidity is low. They thrive in high humidity environments.
@@greenwaspremoval Thanks for the info. Old wasp nests seem like the exact type of place you would find such a creature. By the way I enjoy the videos and watch from time to time. I experimented raising paper wasps a couple of summers ago, and I had a successful couple of nests. I find it quite fascinating to observe their social behavior. I can't remember if I had previously commented about that here before or if it was another channel, but figured I would mention it anyway. Something interesting I'll share...there was a wild European paper wasp nest I found this past summer. Out of boredom I offered them a piece of ham from a sandwich I was eating. I didn't expect them to accept it, as I know that they hunt for insects, but one female grabbed it and I watched her chew it up and feed it to the larvae. I was very surprised as I had tried offering meat to nests of a few different types of paper wasps before and none of them would accept vertebrate meat at all. I do know that yellowjackets and hornets use meat from vertebrates however.
Glad to hear you enjoy the videos. Your experiences with wasp keeping are great to hear about. We encourage everyone to explore the world of wasps to gain a better understanding of them, and share what they learn and observe. European Paper Wasps (Polistes Dominula) are extremely adaptable invasives in North America. If they ate meat from your sandwich perhaps they are adapting their feeding habits to include foods that humans also eat, just as yellowjackets have done for many years. At some point, as their natural food sources (wild insects, flower nectar, etc.) become increasingly depleted due to climate change, human encroachment on wilderness, and other environmental factors, all wasps will ultimately have to adapt to eating/scavenging human leftovers in order to survive. We see this all the time now with yellowjackets hovering around trash dumpsters for the food waste. Perhaps we'll see Polistes species following that behavior in the future.
![How to Get Rid of Booklice (Barklice, Psocids) [4 Easy Steps!]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2JyKG1ejmlY/mqdefault.jpg)
I live in Greece and Polistes Dominula are native here, when i found her abandoned nests in the end of the season they have honey inside, do they make honey?
Hello CI. Thanks for visiting our channel all the way from Greece! We appreciate your comment as others may learn from it too. Wasps often do make a sort of honey which they create by collecting nectar from flowers, processing it, then regurgitating it back into the nest in small droplets stuck to the inner walls of the nest cells, where it is stored as food. They do the same thing with water droplets which are for keeping the nest hydrated and to cool it in the hot weather. You can see this process in one of our other videos which features a Polistes Fuscatus (Northern Paper Wasp) queen building her nest, laying eggs, and provisioning the nest with “wasp honey/nectar” and water. It’s a fascinating process to watch.
One man's pest is another keepers food source. I want to diversify my diets for micro geckos and have been trying to find info on these guys thanks for the insight. Do you know if they can cross water? I use a moat to keep isolation on pest bugs I keep.
Hi Dan S. Thanks for visiting our channel. That's a great question about whether or not booklice can cross water. We have no data on that, but we suspect they would be capable of crossing water as they are often found around water sources and they thrive in high humidity, so it would make sense that they would have evolved with that ability. If we ever see any more in our habitats we'll test them for that ability. I bet they'd float right across the surface.
@@greenwaspremoval thanks for the quick reply I will try petroleum jelly or baby powder barriers as those work with ants. Wasp nests are just going dormant in NC I will see if I can get a few and culture the book lice. I'm thinking a lattice of 1/4 inch aged wood glued together Lincoln log style with a moisture gradient bottom to top. No seeum mesh or polyester felt for vent holes.
Let us know how it goes with the booklice if you find any in your local wasp nests. Curious how prevalent that is. You'll want to obtain high res magnifier optics of some type to study these tiny beasties and get the most accurate species identification. We use magnifying glasses and microscope cams to get best imagery for study purposes (lots of inexpensive options on Amazon etc.).
Do you use any of the collected used nests in live habitats?
Hello B860. Happy Holidays to you and yours. Yes we do sometimes use old paper wasp nests or old comb in live wasp habitats. However, all old nests must be heat treated first to remove pathogens, insects, parasites, etc. Otherwise the nest will soon become infested with various beasties that don't belong there - which is what this booklice video illustrates.
Interesting. I've never seen these in my region of Northern California.
Hello yearginclarke. Thanks for your comment. Booklice are interesting insects. They are quite easy to miss with the naked eye due to their tiny size. We'd never seen them before either until we found them in an old Polistes paper wasp nest that was collected in the field, then we studied them in a couple wasp habitats last season. They are evidently quite sensitive to humidity levels and will die off inside structures when humidity is low. They thrive in high humidity environments.
@@greenwaspremoval Thanks for the info. Old wasp nests seem like the exact type of place you would find such a creature. By the way I enjoy the videos and watch from time to time. I experimented raising paper wasps a couple of summers ago, and I had a successful couple of nests. I find it quite fascinating to observe their social behavior. I can't remember if I had previously commented about that here before or if it was another channel, but figured I would mention it anyway.
Something interesting I'll share...there was a wild European paper wasp nest I found this past summer. Out of boredom I offered them a piece of ham from a sandwich I was eating. I didn't expect them to accept it, as I know that they hunt for insects, but one female grabbed it and I watched her chew it up and feed it to the larvae. I was very surprised as I had tried offering meat to nests of a few different types of paper wasps before and none of them would accept vertebrate meat at all. I do know that yellowjackets and hornets use meat from vertebrates however.
Glad to hear you enjoy the videos. Your experiences with wasp keeping are great to hear about. We encourage everyone to explore the world of wasps to gain a better understanding of them, and share what they learn and observe. European Paper Wasps (Polistes Dominula) are extremely adaptable invasives in North America. If they ate meat from your sandwich perhaps they are adapting their feeding habits to include foods that humans also eat, just as yellowjackets have done for many years. At some point, as their natural food sources (wild insects, flower nectar, etc.) become increasingly depleted due to climate change, human encroachment on wilderness, and other environmental factors, all wasps will ultimately have to adapt to eating/scavenging human leftovers in order to survive. We see this all the time now with yellowjackets hovering around trash dumpsters for the food waste. Perhaps we'll see Polistes species following that behavior in the future.
I love how raspy your voice is
Hi S. Thanks for your comment. Some days are raspier than others for sure. Seems the voice changes by the hour sometimes!