Among other wildlife greats, there are “great white sharks,” “great blue herons,” and “great black wasps.” Here’s one of the latter, apparently a 1.5-inch female, working the daisy fleabane on Tuesday. Her slightly less great mate – male GBWs are smaller – was working the neighboring flowers:
Great blacks (Sphex pensylvanicus) are native to Maine and fairly common throughout the nation. They’re “solitary” wasps in that they typically don’t live in colonies or nests.
A pair usually will dig a burrow for their larvae and feed them there. These are impressive and virtually always helpful insects. They’re pollinators as well as predators of pest insects, which they paralyze and bring back to their larvae as live food.
I’ve never known them to be aggressive to, or even interested in, humans that don’t try to provoke them significantly. Curiously, the literature says that only the females can sting, but I’ve never tested that finding personally. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on September 2, 2025.)