A Wood Wasp, also known as a "parasitic wood wasp" or "horntail", is a mostly harmless flying insect, about 23 mm long, common for example in the United Kingdom. They are named for their habit of feeding on dead wood. The female has a tube at the back of her body which gives her a dangerous look, but it is an ovipositor. Families See text. ... Orders Subclass Apterygota Symphypleona - globular springtails Subclass Archaeognatha (jumping bristletails) Subclass Dicondylia Monura - extinct Thysanura (common bristletails) Subclass Pterygota Diaphanopteroidea - extinct Palaeodictyoptera - extinct Megasecoptera - extinct Archodonata - extinct Ephemeroptera (mayflies) Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) Infraclass Neoptera Blattodea (cockroaches) Mantodea (mantids) Isoptera (termites) Zoraptera Grylloblattodea Dermaptera (earwigs) Plecoptera (stoneflies) Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets... A millimetre (American spelling: millimeter, symbol mm) is an SI unit of length that is equal to one thousandth of a metre. ... The ovipositor is an organ used by some of the arthropods to deposit their eggs. ...
They belong to families Xiphydriidae, Orussidae, Syntexidae or Xyeloidea of the order hymenoptera. Suborders Apocrita Symphyta Many families, see article Hymenoptera is one of the larger orders of Insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. ...
External links
A description with photo (http://www.uksafari.com/woodwasp.htm).
Apparently these wasps only lay eggs on trees that still have their bark on them, and this is a key to the relative importance of these wasps in structures.
Their presence in the wood of a structure always is the result of their being built in with wood that was already infested.
I witnessed this one time in a year when the woodwasp population seemed to be at an all-time high, and a lot of people were experiencing encounters with the wasps.