The Petioleoid Wasp

The next wasp is the petioleoid wasp, which gets its name from the beautifully elongated petiole which is a segment just before the abdomen or gaster.
Petioleoid wasp belongs to the handsome group of wasps from the family- Vespidae. A good majority of the vespidae has a well shaped body with a hardened ketenes exoskeleton. The body in most of the vespidae is colored yellow and brownish red.
Vespoids are both solitary and social in nature. And has a well developed brain. Vespoids build very good and beautiful nests, which are engineering marvels, for e.g. I remember observing a very pretty and large nest of the paper wasp from Empress garden in Pune. The nest was attached to a branch of a tree and was hanging from there. The nest had a pendulous apex and the nest was oval in shape.
It was made completely with wood pulp, which was mixed with wasp saliva for hardening. It looks some what like this.

Vespidae generally as a group uses a wide range of nesting materials available in nature.
The nests of most species are constructed out of mud, but polistines and vespides use plant fibers, chewed to form a sort of paper (also true of some stenogastrines).

Here are some of the subfamilies….
Eumeninae: potter wasps
Euparagiinae
Masarinae: pollen wasps
Polistinae: paper wasps
Stenogastrinae
Vespinae: yellowjackets, hornets

The Vespidae are a large (nearly 5,000 species), diverse, cosmopolitan family of wasps, including nearly all the known eusocial wasps and many solitary wasps.