Some kinda wasp?

[vwboomer]

I started hauling a beech that a friend had cut down. It's in pretty good shape for a beech, it seems only the center was rotted a little way up.
In the process of splitting it, I found this monster

Crappy cell phone pics but it's all I've got. It was burrowed into pretty solid wood, it's about 2" long, and the stinger on the tail was about 1/2" long.
In another section of wood that was all soft and dirtlike, I found a lone stinger.

The biggest round from the tree is only about 20" but damn that stuff seems heavy when it's just cut!

 

[Hedgerow]

Is this what it looked like? Alive?

[video=youtube;CJArsRpNHyA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJArsRpNHyA[/video]

 

[vwboomer]

yep pretty much. I google image searched giant wasp but didn't come up with much that looked close.

 

[vwboomer]

Come to think of it, after reading a bit about them, this is what was infesting the beech that I brought home a couple years ago. Except the wood was much closer to punky and 9/10ths of the larvae were already dead or frozen. Glad this tree was taken down before it got to that point.

 

[thepheniox]

I'm pretty sure it's a parasitic wasp and it was laying it's eggs in a larvae that is already in the wood.

 

[thepheniox]

Sirex wood wasp. Not eating larva like I thought. Yeap eating the wood.

 

[RandyMac]

Stump####er.

 

[One Shot Will]

It is called a Wood Wasp. They lay their eggs in dead or dying trees. They inject an enzyme or bacteria with the eggs
for the larvae to feed on when they hatch. Are supposed to be harmless to humans just annoying. In colder climates can
take up to five years to reach adulthood. Cut some dead Spruce last week with a bunch of them inside when i split it.

 

[Fyrebug]

That thing at the end is not a stinger but an 'ovipositor' basically an egg laying tube.

 

[avason]

Came across the same thing while splitting wood from a fallen beech. Looked pretty nasty!