NFR Interesting wasp

[Northern]

Dozens of these on a standing snag in my front yard. Beautiful wasps - shimmer purple-blue in the sun. A brief web search yielded maybe Giant Ichneumon Wasp? Body a little over an inch long, for scale. I think that's an ovipositor, not a stinger!

 

[Cabezon]

Dozens of these on a standing snag in my front yard. Beautiful wasps - shimmer purple-blue in the sun. A brief web search yielded maybe Giant Ichneumon Wasp? Body a little over an inch long, for scale. I think that's an ovipositor, not a stinger!
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The ichneumons are parasitoids. They use that long ovipositor to probe into the wood for the larval stage of another insect, for this species, often horntail wood-wasps. They lay their egg in or on the surface of the larval host. The larval host is paralyzed. The ichneumon larva proceeds to eat the host alive until the ichneumon larva is ready to metamorphose and emerge. It then bursts out of the body of the host (think the movie Alien).
Steve

 

[tkww]

I've had fun watching them on a sandy lake beach dig a hole, then show up a while later dragging a caterpillar, stuff it in the hole, and bury it.

 

[Travis Bille]

I'm so illiterate I read that as "interesting swap". Maybe we need a WASPSWAP!

 

[wanderingrichard]

Sure thing. Would you take 2 nests of Murder Hornets in exchange for a nest?

 

[PhilR]

Can they be trained to go after pine borers?