Vespa crabro Wasps

Figure 7 Venomous hymenoptera insects, (a) Common honeybee (Apis me/Z/fera) (b), eastern yellowjacket Vespula maculifrons)-, (c) European hornet (Vespa crabro), (d) bull ant (Myrmecia esuriens)-, (e) Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica,)] (f) wasp stinger. Photos from (a) to (f) by Autan (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), E. Begin (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), N. Jones (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), Nuytsia (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), Netman (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), and M. Halldin (GNU free documentation license), respectively.

Butts, D. R, Espelie, K.E. and Hermann, H.R. (1991). Cuticular hydrocarbons of four species of social wasps in the subfamily vespinae Vespa crabro (L.), Dolichovespula maculata (L.), Vespula squamosa (Drury), and Vespula maculifrons (Buysson). Comp. Biochem. Physiol. B, 99, 87-91. 

Social thermogenesis is common for many wasps and often studied by thermometry. But no information about the nest metabolism - obtained by direct or mdirect calorimetry - is presented in the literature. Nevertheless, such data would be interesting for energy balances of a complete nest during the season and the contributions from the different castes of the wasps, the environmental temperature, the size of the nest and the insulating properties of the envelope. To find an answer to such questions, experiments similar to those with bumblebee nests were performed on the hornet Vespa crabro. 

Recently experiments were performed on nests of the hornet Vespa crabro and of several wasps by means of combustion calorimetry and DSC, TG/DTG and MS. The ash content of most nests is small (about 3 %) comparable to that of wood (see above) with the exception of nests of the wasp Dolichovespula (7 4 %). In contrast to wood with more than 50 % (fresh) and about 20 % (dry) the water content of wasp nests is extremely low with only 3.6 %. This is of special importance for the insulating properties of the envelope. The combustion energy with values between -16 and -18 MJ/kg corresponds to that of wood [120]. 

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