This Ephialtes manifestator [1] female was ovipositioning in Ridge-saddled carpenter bee (Heriades truncorum) nests in the bee hotel.
Those nests are closed by bees with a plug of resin enforced with little pieces of material like sand and wood. E. manifestator uses its ovipositor to drill through the plug to reach the nest. However in this case she used nearby cracks in the treelogs to make her life easy.
She gentely inserted the needle-like ovipositor through the crack nad started turning by walking side-ways in a circle to find the proper spot to deposit an egg.
The ovipositor shaft, which is a casing consisting of two halves that are zip-locked together, is kept up and away while the ovipositor is in use.
In general the oviposition process takes time.
Literature
1 FITTON, Michael Geoffrey, et al. Pimpline ichneumon-flies. Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae (Pimplinae). Pimpline ichneumon-flies. Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae (Pimplinae)., 1988, 7.1.
