# Honey wasps



## Kickinit233 (Nov 8, 2016)

I live in a pretty been conscious area of California expect my town has many strange regulations and I can't in reality own a hive due to the zoning of my houses yard and was wondering has anyone reared honey wasps and if so could give a give a few pointers. While I have heard that they can be raised for honey I cannot seem to find a way to harvest the honey as their nests are quite different from bee hives.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachygastra_mellifica

Never heard of anyone keep them. Not sure if they make honey that can be harvested.

Your local laws would also cover keeping wasps, and if they didn't they soon would as soon as you started. JMO You would have more of a chance to change the laws to keep honey bees than wasps.


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## Kickinit233 (Nov 8, 2016)

As I thought, in reality these were ramblings of a naive bee enthusiast. While it would be theoretically possible to raise them here as we have a nigh identical climate to some parts of Mexico. As for the honey part, there honey is commonly eaten in some parts of Mexico, the hardest part of rearing them is the fact they build paper nests instead of wax nest. As for the domestication they are one of few members outside of the honey bee family that are considered semi-domesticated to fully domesticated.


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## anthecologist (Sep 4, 2016)

The nest is completely destroyed to harvest the honey. Here's a good article on them: http://bugeric.blogspot.com/2011/02/wasp-wednesday-brachygastra-mellifica.html


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