My Chinese Mantid Eating Bee

[ManisJunky]

Or is it a hornet? I recently caught this Chinese Mantis in the wild and it already molted once. I did notice that it didn't eat before and after the molt (24 hours or so before and after). I just fed it a "bee" and this is the first video that I made with my old HD video camera. I also discovered that I can get nice zoom in footage using a 4x magnifying glass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhi9E0mMVMU

Enjoy!

Erik

 

[PhilinYuma]

It's a yellow jacket, Eric, Vespula germanica or V. vulgaris; both were originally imported from Europe.

I just looked at some really bad articles and videos on how to tell wasps, bees and hornets apart. The following is rough and ready, but might help.

Honey bees are fuzzy little fellows, particularly around the thorax, with stocky, blunt ended abdomens and no "waist" to speak of. "Wild" bees are often larger but built on the same body plan. The large black ones that thrive in my area are carpenter bees.

Yellow jackets have pronounced yellow and black bands around the hairless abdomen which is pointed at the rear end. They also have a very distinct waist between the abdomen and thorax and their antennae, long and black, are larger than those of bees. They are communal wasps that tend to live in a nest in the ground.

Hornet. Think yellow jacket, but larger and with an abdomen that is usually yellow and brown instead of yellow and black. Their nests are often large, made of paper and hang under the eaves directly outside your bedroom window.

Solitary wasps often have very long waists, very long antennae and a very long "ovipositer" or egg laying organ in the female. They do not have a nest and often paralyze another insect and lay an egg on/in it which grows into a larva that eats the living flesh of its paralyzed host. The tarantula wasp is solitary.

Some quite small flies, such as hover flies, have yellow and black stripes on the abdomen and hover in front of flowers with their legs dangling like those of a bee. This bee-like appearance may protect them from a predator that mistakes them from a bee, but they only have two functional wings and their eyes look like those of a housefly.

Hope this helps.

Hypoponera: Is this close enough?

 

[ManisJunky]

It's a yellow jacket, Eric, Vespula germanica or V. vulgaris; both were originally imported from Europe.

I just looked at some really bad articles and videos on how to tell wasps, bees and hornets apart. The following is rough and ready, but might help.

Honey bees are fuzzy little fellows, particularly around the thorax, with stocky, blunt ended abdomens and no "waist" to speak of. "Wild" bees are often larger but built on the same body plan. The large black ones that thrive in my area are carpenter bees.

Yellow jackets have pronounced yellow and black bands around the hairless abdomen which is pointed at the rear end. They also have a very distinct waist between the abdomen and thorax and their antennae, long and black, are larger than those of bees. They are communal wasps that tend to live in a nest in the ground.

Hornet. Think yellow jacket, but larger and with an abdomen that is usually yellow and brown instead of yellow and black. Their nests are often large, made of paper and hang under the eaves directly outside your bedroom window.

Solitary wasps often have very long waists, very long antennae and a very long "ovipositer" or egg laying organ in the female. They do not have a nest and often paralyze another insect and lay an egg on/in it which grows into a larva that eats the living flesh of its paralyzed host. The tarantula wasp is solitary.

Some quite small flies, such as hover flies, have yellow and black stripes on the abdomen and hover in front of flowers with their legs dangling like those of a bee. This bee-like appearance may protect them from a predator that mistakes them from a bee, but they only have two functional wings and their eyes look like those of a housefly.

Hope this helps.

Hypoponera: Is this close enough?

Thanks Phill! This really does clear things up. = ) I thought it was a small hornet, but all of this makes sense. I know that hornets are much more aggressive.

 

[Ntsees]

I feed yellow jackets and bees to my mantids too. But, I only do it after I remove the stinger.

 

[Woodbox]

I just fed a midnight blue solitary wasp to one of my carolina mantids. She caught it, it counter attacked, she released. Later, she re-caught it and, satisfied with its positioning, ate it with no issues.

 

[ManisJunky]

I just fed a midnight blue solitary wasp to one of my carolina mantids. She caught it, it counter attacked, she released. Later, she re-caught it and, satisfied with its positioning, ate it with no issues.

Awesome!