Wasp Facts for Kids

18 Wasp Facts For Kids

1. Wasp is the common name for a large and diverse group of flying stinging insects in the Apocrita suborder.
2. When most people think of a wasp, they think of the yellowjacket, a social wasp found in North America.
3. Wasps and their earlier ancestors first appeared around 240 million years ago.
4. Wasps are related to ants, bees, and sawflies, they are all in the Hymenoptera order.
5. Wasps are found all over the world on every continent, except in Antarctica.
6. Most wasp species are omnivorous and eat a combination of meat and plant matter.
7. Some wasps are actually pollinators, the adults eat nectar from plants and capture live prey to feed to their young.
8. There are around 30,000 wasp species living throughout the world.
9. Wasp species are divided into two groups, eusocial wasps, and solitary wasps.
10. Social wasps are only found in the Vespidae family, with most wasp species being solitary.
11. Social wasps build paper nests that can get as big as a basketball and have around 10,000 individuals.
12. An example of a social wasp species is the European wasp (Vespula germanica)
13. Solitary wasps make up most of the wasp species in the Apocrita suborder.
14. Solitary wasps build paper nests that are no bigger than 1.5 inches and only contain the eggs of that wasp.
15. An example of a solitary wasp species is the black-and-yellow mud-dauber (Sceliphron caementarium).
16. The smallest wasp species is the parasitoid wasp Dicopomorpha echmepterygis with a length of only 139 micrometers.
17. The largest wasp species is the tarantula hawk Pepsis albocincta with a length of 2.15 inches.
18. Wasps, especially social wasp species, are classified as pests when they nest close to human structures.

Wasp Pictures

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the below images will be helpful for your research on wasps. Below are three pictures of various wasp species. These pictures should help you better understand the different types of wasps found around the world.

A picture of the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris).

A picture of a wasp building a mud nest.

A picture of a paper wasp nest.