Orange and Black Wasp
Location: Centreville, VA
August 1, 2010 3:17 pm
I saw this wasp(?) digging a hole in the garden of our school, I watched for a while and took pictures. I left, returned a couple of hours later and the hole was covered up. Not much chance of someone being up there and distrubing it’s natural behavior. Looks like a cousin to the Digger Wasp but not certain.
Bev Basham
Hi Bev,
You were lucky enough to see a burrow of a Great Golden Digger Wasp, Sphex ichneumoneus. The female provisions the nest with crickets, katydids or camel crickets, depending on which of them is most readily available in the area. The Great Golden Digger Wasp ranges across all of the continental United States and much of Canada.