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Grand Marais resident Butch Schulte took a picture of bug not often seen around these parts and he/we wondered what kind of bug it was. Turns out several of our readers could identify it. Lutsen’s Karen Kobey said, “The weird looking insect in the paper is a giant ichneumenon wasp! The long “stinger “is actually how she lays eggs in the larvae of horn tails, another kind of wasp. They are solitary, don’t build any nest and don’t bother us. Another name for them is “stump stabber “which would have been a good title for this photo!”
Kurt Redborg, Grand Marais replied, “Your insect is a parasitoid wasp (order Hymenoptera) of the family Ichneumonidae. The whip-like structure at the end of the abdomen is an ovipositor. This is a female. She uses the ovipositor to drill into wood in search of a larval insect (probably a beetle grub) onto or into which she will lay an egg. She is scary looking but totally harmless to humans — she can’t sting. Ichneumonids are quite common.”
And finally, from David MacLean, Devil’s Track Lake, “The answer to Butch Schulte’s question is a female Giant Ichneumon Wasp, Megarhyssa macrurus which is widely distributed across Eastern North America. The body and ovipositor of this impressive wasp can reach five inches in length. After detecting the presence of its host, the larva of the Pigeon Horntail, a primitive wasp in the family Siricidae, female Giant Ichneumon Wasps use their extremely long ovipositors to drill into dead wood in order to paralyze and lay an egg on the host larva. After hatching, a Giant Ichneumon Wasp larva consumes its paralyzed horntail host within several weeks and emerges as an adult wasp the following summer. In spite of its fearsome looking ovipositor, the Giant Ichneumon Wasp is harmless to humans.”
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