Great Golden Digger Wasp

Sphex ichneumoneus · Bees & wasps

Great Golden Digger Wasp

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 26 July 2026

A Great Golden Digger Wasp on the flowers in the July border, one of the more distinctive large wasps of eastern gardens and meadows, and a solitary hunter that digs its nest in bare soil.

Orange legs and a two-tone abdomen, black at the base and reddish-orange behind it. Like its relative the Great Black Wasp, this is a hunter rather than a colonial defender: females dig a burrow, stock it with paralysed katydids or crickets, and lay a single egg on the provisions before sealing the chamber and moving on.

Digger wasp on ironweed

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 12 July 2025

A Great Golden Digger Wasp working the spiky purple buds of ironweed in the July border, a generalist forager visiting whatever is flowering. It is a solitary wasp of meadows and gardens across North America, and the sunny beds of a botanic garden are exactly its country.

The orange abdomen and golden hair on the thorax are the marks. Despite the size it is a placid species, and the sting is kept for the katydids it hunts to stock its burrow in the bare soil nearby.

Great Golden Digger Wasp

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 5 July 2025

A Great Golden Digger Wasp working fennel flowers in the July border, golden hair on a black-and-rust body. It is a solitary wasp of meadows and gardens across North America, digging its burrows in bare, sunny soil, and in July the burrows are the thing to look for.

The digging is done by the female alone, provisioning a burrow with paralysed katydids and crickets for her larvae rather than anything she will eat. Despite the size and the colour it is a placid species, rarely stinging unless handled.