Yes - there are many types of wasps in California including: German yellowjacket, western yellowjacket, California yellowjacket, paper wasp, mud dauber, fig wasp, Western sand wasp, square headed wasp, bee wolf, Pacific burrowing wasp, gall wasp, soldier wasp, club horned wasp, burrowing wasp, blue mud wasp, cutworm wasp, thread-waisted wasp, mason wasp, potter wasp, and pollen wasp. Obviously this is not a complete list - just scratching the surface really - but it does demonstrate that California has plenty of wasps.
Wasps are fairly common in the deserts of California and Arizona especially species in the genera Pepsis and Hemipepsis in the family Pompilidae. They are quite large and females hunt large spiders or tarantulas which they paralyze with a sting. The still living tarantula is then buried with eggs of the wasp and serve as food for the developing larval wasps. The sting from these wasps is quite painful, one of the most painful of all insect stings.
Sounds like Digger Wasps
There are many types of wasps (over 100,000 species), but they usually fall into one of the two categories - solitary or social. Solitary wasps - mud daubers, pollen wasps, potter wasps. Social wasps - polistine paper wasps.
There are male wasps (drones) and female wasps (queen and workers).
Only a few species of wasp live a social life in northern California. You will find yellow jackets, paper wasps, and mud daubers in the area.
fear of wasps fear of wasps
They make new wasps.
A large number of wasps is called a swarm. Wasps are known to feed on other insects and there are over 20,000 species of wasps.
wasps'
swaps
Wasps do not collect other dead wasps. However, if a wasp is injured, it will emit a special pheromone that will warn other wasps that there is danger nearby. Sometimes other wasps will come to see what that danger might be.
A bethylid is a member of the Bethylidae, a family of aculeate wasps, which vary between parasitoid wasps and hunting wasps.