Asian Paper Wasps in Kaikoura.

[AlanShaw]

We have been seeing lots of Wasps around our house veranda in the recent warm weather. I was puzzled by their long dangling legs in flight, so searched the internet to identify them. The answer was Asian Paper Wasps, which have spread south over NZ since the late 1970's. I did not know that they had spread this far south. Has anyone any up to date info on their present distribution in NZ?

Wasp (Asian Paper)2 ---- Kaikoura, 11-04-2020.jpg (119.82 KiB) Viewed 2184 times

Wasp (Asian Paper) flight2 ---- Kaikoura, 11-04-2020.jpg (8.03 KiB) Viewed 2184 times

[Clinton9]

Please destroy any Paper wasps nests on sight, anywhere in New Zealand.
In northern North Island the Asian Paper wasps had wiped insects and lycaena butterflies populations, with on November last year at Walkawau I saw a large swarm of female Asian Paper wasps flying over muehlenbeckia, looking for copper butterfly caterpillars, to feed their larvaes in nests.

[David Riddell]

Hi Alan, the best one-stop-shop for information on the distribution of animals (and plants, fungi and everything else for that matter) is probably inaturalist.nz

Looking at Asian paper wasps (https://inaturalist.nz/observations?taxon_id=199179) it looks like in the South Island they're mainly along the northern coast of Nelson and Marlborough, and Christchurch, with scattered reports from elsewhere including one from Clarence in July last year. No doubt they'll continue to spread - it's not that many years ago (15-20 I think) that they first turned up in our garden in the Waikato.

One interesting thing about these swarms of paper wasps that appear in the autumn is that they're mostly composed of males - and males don't sting! So they may look alarming, but they're not the hazard they at first appear to be - see viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5696&p=27957
However the first of your pictures at least is definitely a female (black and yellow face and antennae that aren't curly at the ends).

[AlanShaw]

Thanks for that info David. All the ones I checked were in fact females.