Great Black Wasp
Sphex pensylvanicus · Bees & wasps
Great Black Wasps, one landing
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 26 July 2026
Two Great Black Wasps on the same milkweed head, one coming in as the other feeds. Solitary wasps don't share a nest, but nothing stops several from working the same good stand of flowers at once, and a July milkweed bed draws every big wasp in the garden.
The trailing legs on the wasp in flight are landing gear rather than a hunting posture, first to touch down. A wasp this size lands with an audible thump.
Great Black Wasp on swamp milkweed
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 26 July 2026
A Great Black Wasp on swamp milkweed in the July border, a large, entirely black solitary wasp of meadows and gardens across the eastern United States, with smoky blue-black wings. It nests in bare sandy soil and hunts katydids in the long grass.
Swamp milkweed has an awkward pollination mechanism by most standards, its pollen bundled into paired sacs that snag on a visiting insect's leg rather than dusting it loose. Despite the size and the colour, this is a docile hunter as far as people are concerned: adults feed on nectar, and only the katydids carried back to the burrow ever meet the sting.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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