Bear ate wasps

This posting started just as yesterday’s did: watching black bears hunt and sometimes catching Kokanee in a stream. At the end, it took an unexpected and speculative turn.

At first the lone black bear was really high in a cedar tree, but in time it descended again.

From there, it started hunting in the creek for fish.

It did catch a fish or two.

In one case, it took its prize a short ways into the adjacent woods and ate it. As nice as this scene was, it was the scruffy debris on the left side of the bear that caught my eye.

I rummaged through some pictures taken a few moments earlier and found a sharp one showing the neat hexagons of a freshly smashed wasp’s nest on the bear’s right. This was apparently a place in the forest where the black bear had been before. At first I thought the bear was after honey, but it seems that no wasps north of Mexico make honey. No, the bear was eating the tasty wasp grubs. Bears are particularly fond of bald-faced and European hornets, both of which are in good numbers this summer. While they are happy to munch on the adults that may get in the way, they are indeed after the juicy grubs that are found in the hexagonal cavities. This will have been done late at night when the adults were asleep. This black bear was eating more that fish.