Dolichovespula sylvestris queen

[JRsbugs]

I did think the malar spaces were short, but don't both V. vulgaris and germanica have all black scapes? These have yellow at the base underneath.

[JRsbugs]

I have compared my pics to others, and found one site with a face of Vespula alongside Dolichovespula, the difference can be seen but Vespula is very short compared and I wonder if the males don't have as long a malar space as a queen. Comparing the faces of mine they look much like the one on this site to me.

Wespenarten

A UK google brings up all my threads! Including the one I had for D. saxonica earlier this year, looks very similar to me.

Dolichovespula saxonica?

[JRsbugs]

I managed to get a more direct pic of the face today, hopefully this shows the depth of the malar space better. The scapes are yellow so this has to be Dolichovespula surely, and the mark on the face is typical of D. saxonica.

This site is the second I have found saying the antennae base is black, which looks to be true on any pics I have of V. vulgaris and V. germanica. I think I had both V vulgaris and germanica queen today too, unless they are workers, they looked quite large but not quite as big as these males and with a more shapely abdomen.

Types Of Wasps | Wasp Identification

[eucera]

I still think this has the very short malar space typical of Vespula. The pics of your D. saxonica have a hugely long malar space in comparison.

I am not sure where the black scape/yellow scape character comes from. It isn't in my keys. Ideally, a peek at the genital capsule would be ideal for sortinhg out these to species level. The clypeal markings can be rather variable

[JRsbugs]

Which goes to show just how difficult these can be! I don't have any keys.

I have other smaller V. vulgaris and germanica males which actually look like vulgaris and germanica, lol. They vary in size but the biggest isn't as big as these, the abdomen shape also looks different, these are very long and almost parallel sided.

One of them was looking very tired today, I had thought I could easily grab it but I couldn't do it.

[gez]

out & about at the wkend i saw 100s of wasp on the ivy in local graveyard i will try to post some pics as they are very good close ups. they were all so tired with many just fallen off the flowers to the grass below. hope they manage to get into the ivy to winter. gez

[gez]

Originally Posted by gez

out & about at the wkend i saw 100s of wasp on the ivy in local graveyard i will try to post some pics as they are very good close ups. they were all so tired with many just fallen off the flowers to the grass below. hope they manage to get into the ivy to winter. gez

[JRsbugs]

HI gez, they are fun to watch aren't they! Thanks for posting your pics, the face is a dead cert for Vespula vulgaris, it has black antennae scapes too!

Maybe I should post some of my more normal looking vulgaris and germanica but just now it's too nice outside!