Female gall wasps use their stinger to deposit an egg in the leaf veins of a coast live oak leaf. The egg releases hormones into the leaf, causing it to form a small tumor (gall) around the egg.

The gall making process begins when the adult female wasps emerge in the spring to mate and sip plant nectar, which gives them the energy to fly to developing tree leaf buds where they lay their eggs.

Galls can occur on leaves, twigs, branches or roots. Although galls can be provoked by bacteria, fungi or nematodes, the irritant is most often eggs laid by tiny native wasps, mites or other insects.

Here’s what happens: One of these very small wasps bores a tiny hole in the tree bark or, more commonly, in a leaf or leaf bud. The wasp lays an egg inside and injects a chemical that starts the ...

Many native wasps parasitize citrus leaf miner larvae by laying their eggs on or near the larvae. When the parasitic wasp eggs hatch, the parasitic larvae consume the leaf miner larvae.

Wasps of the family Cynipidae had colonized our oaks last spring, drilling into new buds and inserting eggs. As leaves sprouted from the buds, they formed woolly scar tissue around these wounds.

A new species of parasitic wasp has been obtained from the eggs of weevils associated with bushwillows in northeastern Gabon. Given the tiny insect is the first record of its genus for West ...

Controls: Sprays are useless once maggots are inside. Cover plants with floating row covers until flowering, release parasitic wasps, spray leaf undersides with horticultural oil at egg stage.

Here’s where the braconid wasp comes in. Female braconid wasps inject their eggs under the skin of the hornworm. At the same time, they also inject a virus called polydnavirus.

When the wasp egg hatches it has all the food it needs to develop into an adult contained in the pot. Each wasp does a small part to keep down the number of caterpillars in the landscape which can ...