This morning (1 November 2024) two wasps were observed copulating on a laundry rack in northern Italy: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/249984207
Obviously a queen that will overwinter somewhere and found a new colony next year. But why are they copulating now, in November? Shouldn’t they already be done with that? I recall three or four years ago I had a hornets’ nest in the chimney, and the males came out of the fireplace to die on the living room floor – I swept up 10-15 corpses a day for about a week – but by mid-October mid-November there were no more. [Edit: I went and checked. Case of bad memory. It was mid-November, not mid-October.]
A beekeeping friend (also in northern Italy) told me that this morning, in a corner of one beehive, they found the beginning of drone brood, which is surprising since at this time of year there should be no more breeding activity going on. (They were also annoyed because the last varroa treatment of the year can target the mites surviving on the bodies of the worker bees, but is not good at killing off mites that are INSIDE the cells.)
I tried coaxing iNat to tell me if there have been other observations of such “out-of-season” behaviour in wasps (or other insects) in the past week or so, but I am not savvy enough to formulate the appropriate query. Hence my old-fashioned question to the forum: Have any others noticed such behaviour?
In Vermont in the USA (cold climate) I know a lot of Hymenoptera copulate in the fall and then only the queen overwinters. That way the males don’t need to also overwinter then mate after. For these species the drones don’t overwinter either. Just the queens. That part of Italy looks to be low elevation and much warmer than Vermont, but the same pattern may apply.
Honeybees all try to overwinter, so they don’t follow the same pattern.
Yes, that all fits. Only fecundated queens overwinter. It’s just that they seem to be way too late this year.
As for honeybees, in the autumn the worker bees normally kill off any left-over males so they won’t have to feed them through the winter. They literally throw them out of the hive, you can find them on the ground below the hive. And male broods get killed off too. Note the word normally. They do not normally start a new brood NOW.
Oh i see what you are saying, they are copulating later in the fall than usual. Sorry, i misunderstood that part of your post. I see that the upload date was November 1 but there is actually no date listed for when it was observed. Perhaps it was observed a month or two and only uploaded now.
I happened to be on the phone to the person when they took the photo , right after they had put the laundry rack outside in the sun – which is why I know what those white things in the photos are.
I talked them into posting the observation, and in the process they missed the date (I have already mailed them asking them to fix that).
For this specific instance, you can look at the project ‘mating behaviour’ linked below, and filter by location and look at observation dates.
For other behaviours, this is the utility of annotations and observation fields!! Annotate everything you think could be useful!!
THANK YOU, @apusaffinis! I discovered that once I joined the project I could also add my friend’s observation to it.
And I 100% agree, people should – for iNat’s sake! – make use of those annotation and observation fields. And also the tags!
PS: There are so many knowledgeable people out there who identify loads and loads of observations, and I am grateful to them. But is annotating so much more work?
In short, no, annotating is much easier. You don’t need to ID a species to know that it is probably mating, or an adult, or a larvae, or roadkill, annotate everything!
, right after they had put the laundry rack outside in the sun – which is why I know what those white things in the photos are.