Cuckoo wasp
Chrysididae · Bees & wasps
Cuckoo wasp
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 5 July 2025
A cuckoo wasp working a head of dill flowers in the July border at the Botanic Garden, jewel-bright metallic green and blue. Cuckoo wasps live wherever solitary bees and wasps nest, which in a garden means the bare soil and old wood along the borders, and the adults feed at flowers between visits to other insects' nests.
They lay their eggs in the nests of other solitary wasps and bees, and the larva that hatches eats either the host's egg or the food store left for it. The tough, sculpted armour is thought to be a defence against the host returning to find it; a cuckoo wasp caught in the act rolls into a ball and waits to be thrown out.
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