White Memorial staff, interns, and volunteersgathered around a Cerceris Wasp colony at
St. Anthony's Cemetery on White's Woods Rd.
On Thursday, 7/7/2011, 9 White Memorial staff, interns, and volunteers took a field trip to St. Anthony's Cemetery on White's Woods Rd. in Litchfield to learn more about Cerceris Wasps from Claire Rutledge of the CT. Agricultural Experiment Station. James Fischer had previously located a small colony of these wasps here, so it provided an ideal setting to learn more about them. We found 13 holes in the hard-packed soil along a little-used dirt driveway. These wasps seem to prefer hard soil over soft. The photo below shows a wasp peeking out of its hole.
The photo below shows a typical Cerceris wasp
hole with a pile of course-grained soil around it.
Claire supplied us with nets, collecting bags, hole collars, and other equipment that we can use to steal Buprestid beetles from the wasps when they return to their burrows with these prey items. The primary goal is to monitor for the non-native, invasive, and highly destructive Emerald Ash Borer beetle, which is in the Buprestid group, and which is readily captured by these wasps in the Great Lakes states. They haven't been found yet in Connecticut, but this is a relatively easy way to monitor for their presence.
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