“Wasps,” Beth told herself with satisfied certainty.
Down on the pathway, Mark bent to retrieve the can. As he picked it up, a wasp emerged from the opening and buzzed loudly in his direction. Mark had never quite lost his childhood fear of stinging insects. He loathed them. One reason he enjoyed city life was because of the relative absence of crawling, biting bugs. Swearing quietly to himself, he again dropped the tin and proceeded down the track. The beer can lay on its side at the edge of the gravel path, its contents ebbing slowly out onto the baking earth. Lazily, a wasp descended from the clear sky to sip at the sweet liquid. Soon several of her sisters joined her, savouring the fermented fluid as it lay in little pools on the hard ground. Some entered the discarded can where, hidden from view, they replenished themselves in peace.
A little further down the track, Paul paused, waiting for Mark to catch up.
“Bloody wasps!” complained Mark as they continued toward the stables.
There they found the two girls taking turns on Skittles. Sarah rushed over to her father expectantly.
“Dad. Want to see me jump? Mum’s been teaching me.”
“Not now love. Maybe next time,” responded her father absentmindedly.
The girl quickly turned away, hoping he hadn’t noticed the rapid flush of disappointment tingeing her cheek. Mark’s preoccupied manner stung her all too frequently of late.
“Beth needs to get an exterminator in,” continued Mark, still annoyed and on edge over the circumstances of the loss of his beer.
“She is doing something,” offered Paul. “Have you seen all those traps outside the kitchen? They seem to be getting the job done.”
Mark snorted scornfully.
“They won’t really solve the problem though, will they? Just a band-aid measure. She needs to get rid of the nest. Beth never really did know how to follow through on anything.” Paul looked uncomfortable.
“She looks well though, eh?” said Paul, trying to change the subject.
“She sure does!” was Mark’s enthusiastic response.
“She looks great. Do you know what she’s up to these days? You know, if she’s seeing anyone?”
“Not as far as I know,” responded Paul, knowing full well that Beth would not approve of the direction that this conversation was taking.
He left Mark standing in the shade of the stable and went into the paddock to retrieve his daughter. The late afternoon sun filtered through the Gum leaves, lending a mottled glow to the scene. Rebecca and her father wished Sarah goodbye and headed back up the path towards the house. Mark turned to go. A flash of yellow and black startled him. As he hurried back up the path he noticed a wasp fly underneath the stable eaves.
Back in the kitchen Beth waited impatiently for everyone to leave. Now overwhelmed by the extent of her confession to Irene, she felt suffocated and threatened by Mark’s presence in her home. She felt constrained from talking to her children until the visitors were gone. Without Irene there to affirm her, she knew she would also feel just a little silly. Had she been guilty of an overreaction? She feared she had.
Gazing out her window, deep in thought, she saw a wasp enter one of her traps. It hovered, seemingly suspended in mid air, uncertain and confused within the confines of its clear plastic prison. Beth felt a sudden surge of empathy for the insect. Did it feel foolish? Did it realise and then rue the split-second decision that would inevitably destroy it? Irene distracted her attention away from the trap. She and Paul had gathered the children and were packing up to leave. Mark came in, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, made his goodbyes and took off down the drive. Although relieved at his rapid exit, Beth wished he had taken the time to say goodbye to Rick. She walked Irene and Paul to the door and watched as their four-wheel drive made its way out of the gate. It was very good to be alone. She remembered that she had forgotten to confront Mark about the child-support money, or rather, the lack of it. She comforted herself with the thought that it would be easier to do so in a phone call. But it could wait. The day had demanded enough of her already.
Later in the evening, Beth cooked a simple meal of chicken and chips. It was the children’s favourite and she was looking forward to their pleased reaction. After dinner, she followed Rick into the family room where she found him printing something off on the computer. She watched him for some minutes unobserved. His sensitive face was intent on his task, his tongue protruding ever so slightly between his teeth as it did when he was concentrating. She wondered, as she often did, how he would look as a man. It was difficult to imagine. When she entered the room, Rick looked up and smiled at his mother.
“What are you up too?” asked Beth.
“I’m just printing out a story for English.”
“Can I see?”
“Okay, but you’ll think it’s silly.”
“I won’t, I promise. You know how I love to read your stuff.”
With a grimace Rick collated the last page and then handed the typed sheets to her. He gave her a quick, unexpected kiss and ran off. Beth took the essay into the lounge and settled into her favourite chair. She loved to read her children’s writing. She never failed to be surprised at how imaginative they were. This time was no exception.
Rick wrote about her wasps. It was a sweet little story about a wasp named Sabrina who went out one day and got caught in a trap. She was very clever however and escaped, saving her friends as well. They all flew home to the nest where their queen, Zenandra, was anxiously waiting for them to return. There was even a little maxim at the end of the tale.
It read, “If someone offers you something that looks too good to be true, just be careful. It might not be as good as it looks.”
Beth finished reading and sat for some time, deep in thought. After a while she went to find Rick who was watching television in his room.
“This is great Rick. Where did you get the names?”
“I looked them up in that old baby name book. Sarah helped. Zenandra is Persian for ‘queen’. Sabrina is Latin for ‘princess’.”
“What gave you the idea?”
“I was watching the traps last week. A wasp went in but got out again and some others followed it. It was cool!”
Beth was intrigued. She had not observed such a thing herself. She had also not realised that the insects had so captured Rick’s interest.
“What gave you the idea of the little moral at the end? It’s terrific. It reminds me of one of Aesop’s fables.” Rick paused for a moment.
“Dad made me think of that.”
Something in Rick’s voice gave Beth a chill.
“What do you mean?”
“Dad said not to tell you. You’ll just get upset.”
“Don’t be silly Rick. You sound a little upset yourself and I need to know what’s wrong.”
Rick looked away and was silent. Beth waited expectantly, knowing her son could not deny her anything for long. Eventually he spoke.
“Dad wants Sarah and me to go to live with him. He says we could go to a better school and have better holidays and stuff.”
Beth felt sick. A giant knot formed in her stomach and began to tighten. This idea had never been canvassed and it caught her completely off guard. She composed her features and tried to calm her pounding heart. Rick saw the effect his news had on his mother. He looked worried and continued to speak.
“Don’t worry. I said ‘No’. Dad’s just trying to bribe us. He’s offering all this good stuff but I don’t think it would be as good as he says. It made me think of the wasp. It thought it would be good in the trap, but then it wanted to get out.”
Beth gave silent thanks to the clever little wasp.
“What did your sister say?”
“Not much. I think she might kinda’ want to go. She misses Dad. He’s not paying her much attention lately.”
Beth left the room in a state of shock and returned to the lounge. Her thoughts were racing at a million miles a minute. She sat back down and watched the shado
ws lengthen across the walls in the darkening room. She needed to talk to Mark.
CHAPTER 6
The wasp nest was now of a considerable size. No longer did Zenandra labour alone. She had several dozen adult daughters to help with housekeeping duties, and many more on the way. Several weeks ago her first born, Sabrina, completed her final moult. As a larva, she grew by a series of stages. To accommodate her increasing size, she shed her skin at the end of each instar and grew a larger one for the following growth stage. As a fifth-stage larva Sabrina ceased feeding and began preparations for spinning her cocoon.
Firstly, she used her jaws to clear her cell of any debris. Then she began to spin fine strands of silk secreted by her labial glands and discharged through her spinneret. Instinct guided her to attach her silken threads to various points on the cell wall, to form a loose, anchoring framework. Although her primary work up till now was to feed, she never produced waste products to foul her bed. In fact, these collected wastes showed as a dark area clearly visible through the creamy, translucent skin of her abdomen. As Sabrina quietly and adeptly spun the cocoon proper, her mother paused to watch. Somehow Zenandra knew she would no longer have to provide food to this larva. Her lonely existence was near its end. Soon the hive would be filled with helpful companions. Zenandra moved on, impatient for the future.
Inside the cell, Sabrina continued to toil. Having formed an initial mesh of silk, she proceeded to attach the threads of the main casing. Now she was surrounded by a thin, elongated ellipsoid of silk. Within the almost completed cocoon, Sabrina voided her waste products for the first time. The faecal material, encased in a delicate membrane, was deposited as a single black pellet into the posterior end of her pupal case. Her urinary wastes however remained visible in her blood as opaque, white droplets. It was not until she reached adulthood that these would finally be discharged. Her final task was to spin a white cap over the opening to the cell, neatly sealing herself within the confines of her bed. The freshly spun cocoon gleamed softly in the faint light coming from the nest entrance. Secure in her silken shroud, Sabrina entered her pupal stage and underwent metamorphosis. To the observer this appeared to be nothing more than a resting period, but actually it was a time of extreme change. The waspling’s larval tissue broke down and remodelled itself into an adult form. It was an alien process, with no counterpart amongst the mammals. In less than two weeks, the helpless grub was transformed into a winged and capable member of wasp society.
While Sabrina pupated, the queen continued her work of laying eggs, hunting and feeding her growing brood. Soon a hub of pale, capped pupal cells extended from the centre of the nest. Nine days after Sabrina had spun her cocoon, she emerged as a freshly pigmented adult. She used her mandibles to laboriously cut away the cap that sealed her cradle. Stiff and unsure, she nevertheless managed to pull herself out on to the edge of the comb. No longer a worm-like, cell-bound baby, neither was she as large and grand as her mother. Her wings were weak and uncordinated. Instinctively she tested them, making a faint but distinctive buzzing sound. Upon feeling the strange vibration within her nest, Zenandra rushed over to investigate. She was confronted by the birth of her daughter. With obvious excitement she inspected the new addition, touching her all over with her antennae. Sabrina responded with faint movements of her head, and renewed attempts to use her hardening wings. For the next few days she did little except preen, buzz her wings and solicit an occasional mouthful of food from her mother. Around her, daily, emerged adult sisters. Soon Zenandra would be relieved of her duties, except for egg laying. The European wasp population was set to explode.
Meanwhile, under the stable’s eaves, the larvae of the Mud Dauber wasp developed in their little clay pots, without the protection of any proud parent. In one cell, a newly matured Mud Dauber prepared to leave the dark confines of her nest. She’d hatched from an egg several weeks ago, to find her store of paralysed spiders ready and waiting. The voracious waspling fed on the living fresh meat which was powerless to resist or escape, eating carefully at first around the spider’s vital parts to ensure it’s extended survival. Fat and gonads were a favourite first meal. Eventually the tortured prey succumbed to the relief of death, but by then the larva had eaten her fill. She spun a protective cocoon and underwent metamorphosis, just as her cousins did in the nearby nest of the European wasp. However she had no anxious mother to tend her on her emergence. As she began, so would she remain; a lonely predator.
The new adult did not chew her way out of the nest randomly. When her mother sealed off each fully-provisioned cell, she made a mud plug with a slightly convex inner surface. The mature larva somehow detected this difference and turned towards it when spinning her cocoon. As she developed to adulthood, she already faced in the correct direction for her eventual escape. At last, when ready to emerge, she exuded a quantity of watery fluid from her mouth. This served to soften the cap of her cell so that she could more easily gnaw her way out. Working steadily, using her sturdy mandibles as cutting instruments, she finally broke free of her macabre nursery. The beautiful, young wasp remained on the nest edge, dazzling in colour and perfection of shape. Even before her wings were hardened for flight, she would attempt to sting if touched. Entering the world entirely alone, with no knowledge of her parents, required a strong instinct for self preservation. Apart from her brief nuptial flight, she could expect no interaction with others of her kind. She depended almost entirely on inherited instinct to guide her. However these instincts were far more flexible than generally supposed and could be modified by individual judgement and experience. As an adult she became a precise and organised insect, both intelligent and inventive.
Within the nest her siblings had not fared so well. Mother wasp had similarly provisioned five other chambers and laid an egg in each. Little did she know that a treacherous guest crept into the nest while she was away hunting. Unaware of its presence, she proceeded to seal the completed cells, one by one, thus also sealing the fate of her unfortunate offspring. For in the gloom, amongst the paralysed spiders, hid a diminutive, black, parasitic wasp, curiously known as a Wowbug. It had found the nest by climbing up the stable wall to investigate promising sheltered sites, such as those situated beneath its eaves. The Wowbug female seldom flew, although her wings were well developed. With a little luck she would never need them. For, having found a suitable host, she remained in the Mud Dauber’s nest for the full term of her short life.
At barely one millimetre in length, she appeared inconsequential and harmless enough. Yet she was set to wreak havoc. Now safely sealed within a cell, she fed on both the defenceless spiders and the developing waspling. Time and time again she pierced their skin and imbibed the exuded blood. This did not prove immediately fatal to the larva or the spiders. The Wowbug patiently waited in the dark cavity until the sickly, anaemic Mud Dauber grub pupated. She then chewed a hole in the cocoon and, once inside, laid dozens of eggs on the body of the pupa. These hatched almost immediately into a mass of minute, hungry grubs that consumed the helpless waspling entirely. Cannibalism was practised if food supplies ran low. In less than two weeks this horde too would spin vestigial cocoons and emerge as adults.
The male Wowbugs were short-lived and greatly outnumbered the females. They bore stubby, non functional wings and began frenzied mating behaviour immediately. These degenerate drones were aggressive and often engaged each other in fights to the death amongst the debris of spider legs and desiccated wasp pupae. Even a dead male Wowbug, or part of one, was fiercely pounced upon and savagely hurled about by other males. This new generation of Wowbugs then chewed through the carefully constructed mud walls separating the cells. They repeated their life cycle until the nest chambers lay barren and wasted. Only a single Mud Dauber escaped their deadly notice. She would soon be strong enough to fly and to seek out nectar-bearing flowers to satisfy her hunger. Then she must find a mate and go on to select her own nest site. Although likely to remain close to her birthplace, she would never reuse an e
xisting nest. Perhaps the possibility of such deadly parasitic infestation was too great.
A second Mud Dauber nest nearby had also fallen prey to attack. This time the culprit was not a wasp, but an enormous fly. Earlier in the season a Bee fly was attracted by the buzzing sound of a Mud Dauber as she tirelessly constructed and provisioned her nest. The female Bee fly had a stout, orange body that had no obvious waist between the thorax and abdomen. She was dark and hairy and well over twenty millimetres in length. Superficially, her body bore a resemblance to a large bee, hence her name. However there the similarity ended. Her legs were slender and smooth. Long, mottled wings extended flat out from her body as she sat at rest on the stable roof. Her large, compound eyes keenly observed the industrious wasp. The Bee fly had a labour-saving plan in mind. She waited until the Mud Dauber left to collect clay, then darted in to lay numerous eggs on the surface of the partially completed nest. These soon hatched into tiny, eel-like maggots.
The newly hatched grubs made a concerted and surprisingly effective assault on the nest walls, gaining entry through small fissures in the masonry or through unsealed openings. Once safely inside they entered a brief period of suspended animation, unnoticed by the developing wasp larva. As soon as the waspling began to spin its chrysalis, the inactive maggots came to life, attaching themselves to the body of the fat larva just before it closed its cocoon. The young Bee flies proceeded to consume the living pupa, completing their development in the safety of their victim’s pupal shell. At the same time as the first young Mud Dauber adult successfully emerged, the neighbouring nest gave birth instead to Bee flies. Transformed, these flies now gave up their predatory ways. As adults they consumed only nectar.
In spite of her industry, the female Mud Dauber achieved a low survival-rate for her offspring. The complex nest represented a huge parental effort. Unfortunately it also presented an obvious target for enemies. How much better protected were Zenandra’s babies, guarded by their formidable family. The survival of the solitary Potter wasp’s offspring was, by comparison, very much a matter of chance.
Wasp Season Page 5
