Short answers, pulled from the story.
The wasp is a vast, paraphyletic grouping that excludes its own descendants, the bees and ants. This category exists more by exclusion than by shared ancestry and covers hundreds of thousands of species ranging from the microscopic Mymaridae to the massive Asian giant hornet.
The wasp first appeared in the fossil record during the Jurassic period and diversified into numerous superfamilies by the Cretaceous. These creatures have since spread to every corner of the globe except the polar regions.
The female wasp stores sperm inside her body and exercises complete voluntary control over the sex of her offspring. She lays unfertilized eggs to produce males and fertilized eggs to produce females in a haplodiploid system of sex determination.
Among the dozens of extant wasp families, only the Vespidae contains social species, primarily in the subfamilies Vespinae and Polistinae. These social wasps construct their nests using plant fiber, mostly wood pulp, which they gather from weathered wood and mix with saliva to create a paper-like material.
The Agaonidae, or fig wasps, are the only pollinators of nearly 1000 species of figs and are crucial to the survival of their host plants. Since the wasps are equally dependent on their fig trees for survival, the coevolved relationship is fully mutualistic.
The Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote the comedy play Σφήκες, The Wasps, first put on in 422 BC, and the wasps are the chorus of old jurors. The name Wasp has also been used for many warships and other military equipment, including nine ships and one shore establishment of the Royal Navy.