Photogenic yellow-wasp “paper” nest

Posted January 2, 2019

Bees are occasionally shown in Mayan art; wasps very rarely. My interest in looking for wasp nests is to find HONEY Wasps. Yes, wasps that make edible honey. These exist in Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere. But honey wasps are only one of scores of wasp species, so it will take time to find honey wasps at Yaxha. But in the meantime, here are photos of a wasp nest that has beautiful “bee hive” octagonal structure. Although I am not an entomologist, I believe these busy insects are not busy bees but rather are busy wasps.

Enlarge Image It is noteworthy that these waps build around leaves the same way as all the arboreal ant nests that we posted last week.	Enlarge Image Here is the other side of this nest. Again you can notice that it is built around leaves (and of course thus attached to the branch of this tree).	Enlarge Image Here you can see the precision design of the six-sided bee-like hive layer structure. Since this is a national park we do not dismantle the hive to study and photograph the interior.
I used a tall Gitzo tripod for these photos; this is why the photos are not blurry. I use a 30 to 40 year old original Arca-Swiss big ball tripod head (more recent ones are over-engineered and “self-lock” to the point they are unusable). Camera NIKON D810, lens Nikon AF-Micro-NIKKOR 200mm f/4D IF-ED Macro; settings: f/14, speed 1/60, ISO 1250.

We do not yet have an identification for the beautiful wasps here, but they are small and there are literally THOUSANDS of them busily working on their nest structure. This is a healthy-sized mature nest.

Since I seek and then photograph wasp nests all around Guatemala I am stung so often that to me this is simply part of normal discomfort. Most wasps do not sting unless you accidently bump into their nest. Or, if they see a camera with micro lens only a few inches away from their nest!

Archaeologist Jose Leonel Ziesse Altán, one of the administrators of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum, kindly told me where to find this nest when I indicated that one of our goals for the December field trip was to find bee nests, wasp nests, and arboreal ant nests.