I waited twenty years for this!

Roughly twenty years ago, an old timer told me about a wasp he called a "sewing needle" which had a two-inch stinger. He told me that when he was a kid, his mother said the wasp would sew his lips shut if he ever lied.

From my own reading over the years, I learned that the stinger is not for stinging. The female pierces larvae-infested wood and lays an egg on the larvae. When the egg hatches, it eats its host. It is called Megarhyssa macrurus, or just simply "stump stinger"

Today I was stacking wood and this wasp appeared. I couldn't believe I finally got to see one. The bad news is, my firewood has larvae, but I already knew that. I hope there are more of these sewing needles to fight the good fight!

Oh yeah, and there is another specie in this genus with an ovipositor over five inches long! Has anyone seen one?

 

Never saw that before , never even heard of them , weird lookin

 

Yep...got 'em here too. Skeery lookin, huh?

 

X2! Really cool! Don't want to see one in person at all. lol

 

That is weird. We do not have them here.

Kind of a funny wood story on larvae and beetles though. A few years ago we got a woodlot that had been high graded by a bunch of questionable loggers. It was full of White Pine, but they just cut the butt cut logs and got out of there, leaving the landowner with a mess, and a lot of good logs laying on the ground, but not the best logs. As you know, I HATE waste, so we pulled what logs we could, and hauled the logs to the sawmill.

The scaler saw they were a year old and the holes in the logs and was not going to buy them. Well we got our own sawmill so we said that is alright, they are only a year old so the holes are only buried larvae and not worms that have gone all through the wood. The scaler saw that we were willing to saw them, so he figured he would instead, and bought the whole load.

 

Rarely, but I have seen them before. I had no idea why they looked like that so thanks for the lesson. Makes sense now and not quite as scary looking anymore.

 

Oh, the things mothers will say to their kids......

 

Never seen one.
But I wouldn't assume we don't have them here based on that.
Their recorded range:

 

I got a pic of one of these the first time I encountered a few years ago. I have a habit of taking pictures of interesting insects. Now where's that danged pic...?

Edit: Found it.



Took a quick snap Saturday if this thing

 

Was watching one inject some wood yesterday while I SS some beech. I've seen their larva as well and it's freaky looking.

 

The fact we have this many insect-picture-taking wackos on here says something, but I dunno what

 

I have taken so many pictures of insects! And Boomstick and RCBS have some nice pictures. Boomstick's look like the one that has an ovipositor 5+"
Here's a picture of a toe biter from an Applebee's parking lot. Unlike the sewing needle, these guys can hurt.

 

Here's a cool pic I got while hunting one day, not sure what it is. It had a real long needle beak when he pulled it out of the tree

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

Very cool!
Needle beak, or needle tail? I would have thought it was Megarhyssa Atrata, if you hadn't said beak.

 

I have been finding lots of Stag Beetles underneath oak rounds that have been sitting for awhile. One of them bit my ankle!

 

Cool! Never seen one of those here. I'll keep my eyes open for them now along with other stuff like that. Looks like you started an insect thread!