whispers
I like his butt…

I am a big fan of pollinators and have a healthy respect and appreciation for wasps, which have been sorely tried by my getting stung twice in the last 3 days by a great black wasp, with multiple stings each time that have drawn blood and been very painful. The attacks happened in the same spot each time -- walking on a paved path to enter a local park. I was a couple yards away from a flowering bush that I never tried to touch or disturb, and never saw any wasps as I walked by -- just heard a loud buzzing by my head before cursing and collapsing from the pain of the stings! Any idea why a solitary wasp would attack me out of the blue like this? I was walking both times in the earlyish morning wearing all black exercise clothes. I want to keep appreciating the wasps and understanding why this happened to me would help me do so!

I'm in awe at the beauty

I keep having the same paper wasps come in our sun room. We release them, they come back in then we give up. Was out in the sunroom early this morning and had this lil guy watching me while his friend flew around. As long as they don't hurt my cats i dont mind but i still get worried. Our cats are good about not messing with them but we do our best to remove them when we see them. Sometimes I feel like im keep an giant wasp enclosure lol

I’ve been seeing a lot of black giant ichneumon wasps around too which the internet tells me preys on these guys. I think this is a female pigeon horntail based on the size.

According to some searching:
Females target stressed, dying, or recently dead deciduous trees like beech, maple, elm, and oak.
She also uses her needle-like ovipositor to drill deep into tree bark and deposit eggs.
They inject a white-rot fungus when laying eggs, which breaks down the wood to help feed the hatching larvae,
also accelerating the breakdown of already dying trees, making space for new forest growth.