I have a few insects that I consider my favorites. If I had to pick one, I might go with the cicada killer wasp. This intimidating looking insect is a solitary wasp that emerges each summer to hunt for periodical cicadas. The female wasp searches in trees for a cicada to bring back to her underground burrow. The paralyzed, but still living cicada, serves as a source of food for the immature wasps (eggs are laid on the cicada). People usually encounter the cicada killer when they have a male wasp chase them from the area near the burrow. The size of the wasp can be unsettling. However, male wasps do not have a stinger (oviposter for egg laying) and female wasps are extremely passive. (I have personally picked up females when they are trying to move a nice, fat cicada back to the nesting site.) I do not recommend controlling these fascinating insects. If you are determined to have them removed or are hypersensitive to bees/wasps and they have to be removed, it may prove difficult. They nest in loose and/or sandy soil. New wasps will usually find these sites every year. Treating the entrance and down into the burrow with a formulation of carbaryl of a synthetic pyrethroid may kill the current year’s population.

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