ID for ?parasitized hoverfly

[Hedgehoggy]

Spotted this very sluggish hoverfly crawling up my house wall late this afternoon. It looks like its ‘waist segments’ are missing (sorry, don’t know anatomy terminology for this section) -- is this normal or has it been parasitized? I mixed up some honey + water and smeared the paste on the wall in front of it, which it fed from eagerly. When I returned 10 mins later it had gone.

[bigdave60dog]

It`s a wasp.

[Hedgehoggy]

Really?!! It was sooo small compared to the regular wasps I'm familiar with, that I thought it was a species of a hoverfly-wasp mimic!

[Geoff F]

I'm not surprised that it lapped up your free lunch offer.

Seeing a waist is usually a good sign of some form of wasp and 99.9% of the time that is correct.

There isn't much difference in size between a small wasp and an many forms of hoverfly. In fact many hoverfly species are larger than the average worker wasp.

But sometimes this can work the other way around. Recently I was watching a couple of wasps when I thought one didn't seem quite right; and when I got close enough for a photo, it turned out to be Chrysotoxum elegans.

But your wasp does appear to have a bit more black on the abdomen than a 'normal' Common Wasp so I wonder about it being a Median Wasp (Dolichovespula media).

However, I'm certainly not an expert on wasps and would need to see some more angles.

[JRsbugs]

It's most likely Vespula vulgaris, it was probably having a little snooze.

Janet