A male Yellow Hairy Flower Wasp

Author Koh Lin ◦

Some times I wonder… who is lucky… the insect that I have rescued from the swimming pool… or me, having the opportunity to capture some closeup photos.

Here I was, doing my usual ground maintenance, when a little turbulance in the swimming pool caught my attention. I could see it was a largish wasp… and once I fished it out of the pool with the net, instant recognition… a male Yellow Hairy Flower Wasp aka Radumeris tasmaniensis.

Now whilst it is only the female Yellow Hairy Flower Wasp that sting (they do this to paralyze the prey that they lay with their eggs as food for the hatching larvae), the male is not known to sting… but ever the caution me, I was not going to risk putting it on my hand. Still I managed to encourage him to crawl onto a dry eucalypt leaf…

Once the Yellow Hairy Flower Wasp started to appear a little more active, I then moved him onto a rose in the garden, where it finished drying off. I continued on with my duties, and when I passed by the rose a half hour later, he was gone.

The Yellow Hairy Flower Wasp presented here was in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. You can see more about this species in the Insects | Wasps | Radumeris tasmaniensis.

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