Genus Vespa Linnaeus

Vespa Linnaeus, 1758: 343 . Type species: ‘ Vespa crabro Fab’. (= Vespa crabro Linnaeus, 1758); designated by Latreille, 1810: 438.

Macrovespa Dalla Torre, 1904: 64 (subgenus of Vespa Linnaeus). Type species Vespa crabro Linnaeus, 1758 . Designated by Bequaert, 1930: 64.

Nyctovespa van der Vecht, 1959: 210 (subgenus of Vespa Linnaeus). Type species: Vespa binghami du Buysson, 1905, original designation.

Diagnosis. The subfamily Vespinae can be distinguished from other Vespidae by the hind wings lacking an anal lobe (Fig. 1a); forewing recurrent veins ending in the same submarginal cell (Fig. 1b), marginal cell narrowly pointed along costal vein (not extending away from it) (Fig. 1b); pronotal lobe separated from tegula by a distance equal or less than its length (Fig. 1c); tarsal claws simple, not bifid (Fig. 1d), without parategula (Fig. 1e), and metasoma sessile with first tergum truncate (Fig.1f).

Species of the genus Vespa can be distinguished from other vespine genera by having both the pronotal and the pretegular carinae (Fig. 2a), head vertex with the distance from the posterior ocellus to the posterior margin of vertex more than twice the distance between the posterior ocelli and the compound eye (Fig. 2b), the basal metasomal segment is anteriorly rounded (Fig. 1f), and the length of the forewing prestigma is three times or more the length of the pterostigma (Fig. 1b).