Things like head capsule width, length of metathracic femur and tibia, body length, body weight, wing length, and wing width are common measures. Are these all the same species? There is no guarantee that you will be able to find between-nest differences given within-nest variability.

Thanks Timothy. Yes, all individuals are from Vespa crabro nests. The nests were located inside bird boxes and we decided to take measures to determine if there are differences between nests. As you said, there is no guarantee that we will find differences, but we can try. Thanks again for the info, and greetings from Spain.

Carlos.

De nada Carlos. Maybe wasp size declines with increasing nest density? If the study area is large enough you could try to associate size with foraging success, or maybe look at local environmental effects. Distance to water or the percentage of field and forest or hedgerows. It would be useful if someone has published data on foraging distance.

It´s probably that we will find that correlation between wasp size and nest density, but at the moment I´m not able to confirm it. Yes, we´re going to study local enviroment (percentage of tree cover, distance to water points, local climatology, etc.). The problem is that we don´t have a high number of nests. However, we´re going to investigate just in case...

Greetings,

Carlos.

Hello Carlos; I once read a paper that needed to track individual honeybees. They used flourescent powder to dust onto the individuals. Later, a black light was used to detect dusted individuals. I have no idea how long the dust lasted, if it would stick to a wasp. The idea might be worth looking into.

Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers

I´ve never read about that tracking technic James Des Lauriers , but it seems to be effective in order to determinate which female individuals come back to the nest in the following season, for example. However, as you said, the effect of the fluorescent may dissapear. But it´s a good option that could be used in the future in our researchs. Thank you for the info James!

Greetings from Spain,

Carlos.

Carlos; If my memory is accurate the study that I remember was using the method in a study that was watching individual day by day. If you try this method be sure to test it's duration before you begin a big study.

Regards, Jim Des Lauriers

There are many methods for tracking insects, and bees have a long history of such research. A great deal depends on the goal of marking. There were small numbers printed on metal tags that could be glued to a bee. Insects can be marked with egg white or milk proteins. Some insects could be fitted with an RFID tag and followed. I used liquid paper for marking beetles, though liquid paper was more popular when people still had typewriters. The great thing about marking is that you can get some cool ecological and behavioral data with only a few colonies.

Of course James Des Lauriers , if we decided to use that method, we need to check the duration of the effect before.

Greetings!

I have never read about that methods Timothy A Ebert , thanks for the info. There is no doubt that it is an interesting topic.

Hello. You can measure the weight, head region, abdominal length, wing length and width, total length of the insect (i. e. from the tip of the mouth to the tip of the abdomen), the length of the legs as well as the length of the thoracic region.