Wasp nest

“ In this chamber a single egg is laid, and some insects or spiders, captured and so stung by the wasps as to be paralyzed but not killed, are put in for food. The nest is then closed up by the female, and the larva hatching from the egg feeds on the enclosed helpless insects until full grown, when it pupates in the cell and the issuing adult gnaws and pushes its way out of the ground. Each species of wasp has habits peculiar to itself, making always the same kind of nest, and providing always the same kind of food. ”

“ Wasps make nests which are almost as wonderful as those of the hive-bee. That of the common yellow-jacket wasp is generally placed in a hole in the ground, or in a cavity under a stone, and is made of a substance very much like coarse paper, which the wasps manufacture by chewing wood into a kind of pulp. You may often see them sitting on a fence, or on the trunk of a dead tree, busily engaged in scraping off shreds of wood for this purpose. When the nest is finished it is often as big as a football, and of very much the same shape ”

“ The Wasp you saw on the wood-pile was selecting [Pg 43] a home, like a careful matron, and was bundling the fibres together to use in the construction of her nest. This she was obliged to do without any help whatever, for all the other wasps had died the previous autumn, while she was left to sleep through the winter in some warm nook, then found a new colony in the spring. ”

“ But no; she is exactly over her burrow. Without once letting go her prey, she scratches a little in front of her, gives a push with her head, and at once enters, carrying the Fly. The sand falls in, the door closes, and the Wasp is at home. It makes no difference that I have seen this Wasp return to her nest hundreds of times; I am always astonished to behold the keen-sighted insect find without hesitation a door which does not show at all. ”

“ These wasps are not social, like the ones we are familiar with, and make no nest other than a cell in which to place their eggs, together with the nourishment which the young, when hatched, will require. This nourishment is the creatures aforesaid. In the best-known instance the female wasp first makes a long tunnel in the earth, with three or four separate chambers or cells at the end of it, in which she deposits her eggs. ”

“ But I, who should have to pay with my own skin, think twice before digging up the nest I desire. I begin by suffocating the inhabitants. Dead Wasps do not sting. It is a brutal method, but perfectly safe.
I use petrol because its effects are not too violent, and in order to make my observations I wish to leave a small [140] number of survivors. The question is how to introduce it into the cavity containing the Wasp’s nest. A vestibule, or entrance-passage, about nine inches long, and very nearly horizontal, leads to the underground cells. ”

“ The mode of enlarging is sufficiently curious. The British wasps enlarge their nests either by making a larger covering and then removing the smaller, or by raising blisters on the outside, and eating away beneath them. But the pendulous wasp of Brazil proceeds on just the opposite principle, making new cells first, and covering them afterwards. The new tier of cells is set on the bottom of the nest, which thus becomes the floor of that tier, and a new bottom is then made beneath these new cells. ”

“ Whichever it may be, the wasp adroitly stings it at the spot which induces, or in the several spots which induce, complete paralysis as to motion, let us hope as to sensation also. This done, the wasp entombs the helpless being with its own egg, and leaves it for the support of the future grub. Another species feeds her young one from time to time with fresh food, visiting at suitable intervals the nest she has made and carefully covered and concealed with earth, which she removes and replaces, as far as necessary, at each visit. ”

“ While this is going on, more and more cells are being built inside, until at last five or six large combs of cells fill the inside of the nest. The queen wasp lays an egg in each cell as it is formed; and the worker wasps gather food and nurse the young grubs until they become perfect wasps.
“By and by some young queens, or female wasps, are 66 hatched out. These lay eggs, and soon the population the paper nest numbers many thousands.”
“And that is why the gardener kills every wasp he sees in spring time,” said Frank.
“Every wasp we see in spring,” said Uncle George, “is a queen wasp. ”

“ You find a keyhole, or the tap of a filter, filled with mud as the result of this wasp's labours. It works so rapidly that it generally completes its job in the course of a day. An even more inconvenient site for its nest is the sleeve of a garment left hanging on a peg, especially if you put the garment on while the wasp is at work. A small colony of social wasps built their comb under the refectory table of the village Mission-house. ”

“ Briskly and gayly they fly back and forth, pausing at the nest long enough to pat the soft building material into shape. A single load makes half a ring at the larger part of the nest or a whole one at the bottom; and since one dries before the next is put on, the contour of each ring is visible when the tube is done, giving a very artistic effect. This is only accident, however; the wasp cares nothing about the beauty of the structure, for her next step is to daub the whole with lumps of mud, the walls being thus thickened and strengthened. ”

“ She alights, and scratches away the loose earth at the entrance of the nest with her first legs, and then, as she creeps within, she passes the fly along from the second to the third pair, so that the end of its body, projecting beyond the abdomen of the [123] wasp, is visible for an instant before it is carried inside. Sometimes she drops the fly behind her, and then, turning around, pulls it in with her mandibles. In other cases, where a longer portion of the tunnel has been filled with earth, the fly is left lying on the ground while the wasp clears the way. ”

“ One of the most remarkable of our native social wasps is the tree-wasp (Vespa Britannica) , which is not uncommon in the northern, but is seldom to be met with in the southern parts of the island. Instead of burrowing in the ground like the common wasp (Vespa vulgaris) , or in the hollows of trees like the hornet (Vespa crabro) , it boldly swings its nest from the extremity of a branch, where it exhibits some resemblance, in size and colour, to a Welsh wig hung out to dry. We have seen more than one of these nests on the same tree, at Catrine, in Ayrshire, and at Wemyss Bay, in Renfrewshire. ”

“ When one of the Mason-wasps has built on the rock her heap of dome-shaped cells, with a covering of little pebbles set in the plaster, when the grubs have eaten up their store of Caterpillars and hung their rooms with silk, we see the Golden Wasp settle on the outside of the nest. ”

“ It's rather a touchy job, is taking a wasp's nest,—very different from hiving bees; we give them a home, but we take one from the wasps.
"If the queen bee falls into the new hive, the bees are right enough—they are sure to go where she is; but the wasps are naturally angered and frightened at being suffocated out of their home. So, I say, keep clear of wasps' nests; those jobs are best done on the quiet." ”

“ Like these, the great object of their industry is the erection of a structure for their beloved progeny, towards which they discover the greatest affection and tenderness, and, like bees, construct combs consisting of hexagonal cells for their reception; but the substance which they make use of is very dissimilar to the wax employed by bees, and the general plan of their city differs in many respects from that of a bee-hive. The common wasp’s nest, usually situated in a cavity under ground, is of an oval figure, about sixteen or eighteen inches long, by twelve or thirteen broad. ”

“ In one instance, in which we had been opening a nest close by, the tunnel was entirely blocked by the loose earth which we had disturbed, and the wasp worked for ten minutes before she cleared a way to her nest. During part of this time she held the fly, but when she realized that it was going to be a long piece of work she laid it down near by. As the wasp enters she sometimes leaves the hole open behind her, but oftener fills it by pushing up earth from below. When she comes out again she throws in a little dirt, and then begins to circle about the place. ”

“ When a wasp’s nest is removed from its natural situation, and covered with a glass hive, the first operation of the inhabitants is to repair the injuries it has suffered. They carry off with surprising activity all the earth or other matters which have fallen by accident into the nest ”

“ This wasp was first seen at a distance of twenty feet from her nest, and yet she went straight to the right spot without the least confusion, showing that some individuals of the species have a better idea of locality than others.
The nest is a short, shallow tunnel with an enlargement at the end, within which are placed the grasshoppers, on their backs, with their heads in. Earth is packed solidly into the tunnel, but not into the cavity at the end. ”

“ The marked wasp will always return to the marked nest.
As soon as the cells are completed, the wasp deposits an egg in each, and immediately begins to busy herself about the future welfare of the coming baby wasps. Just here these remarkable creatures show that they possess a mental faculty which far transcends any like act of human intelligence; they are able to tell which of the eggs will produce males and which females. ”

“ I think it is of the wasp-kind, and plasters its mud nest in all sorts of places. It is afraid of nothing—likes to look at itself in the glass, and leaves its young in our charge. There is another sociable creature—hope it isn’t a wasp—which has built two nests under the edge of this table on which I write to you. ”

“ Several wasps assemble round each of the returning workers, and receive their respective portions. It is curious and interesting to observe their motions on this occasion. As soon as a wasp that has been filling itself with the juice of fruits arrives at the nest, it perches upon the top, and, disgorging a drop of its saccharine fluid, is attended sometimes by two at once, who share the treasure ”

“ Each one makes a separate nest and provisions it by her own labor; and in many cases a new nest is made for each egg. There is no coöperation among them; although in certain genera, as Aphilanthops and Bembex, a number of individuals build close together, forming a colony. The nests may be made of mud, and attached for shelter under leaves, rocks, or eaves of buildings, or may be burrows hollowed out in the ground, in trees or in the stems of plants. The adult wasp lives upon fruit or nectar, but the young grub or larva must have animal food ”

“ Thus we see that it exerted force in three directions, never twice in the same direction, which fact shows conscious determination and no slight degree of intelligence.
A ground wasp once built a nest beneath the brick pavement in front of my door. The entrance of the nest was situated in the little sulcus, or ditch, between two bricks. While the wasp was absent, I stopped the entrance with a pellet of paper, and, when the little housekeeper returned, she was nonplussed for a moment or two, when she discovered that her doorway had been closed. ”

“ Sometimes the prey is at once dismembered, sometimes on the way, sometimes at the nest. The wings, in which there is no nourishment, are cut off and rejected; the feet, poor in juices, are also sometimes disdained. There remains a mutilated corpse, head, thorax, abdomen, or part thereof, which [127] the wasp chews repeatedly to reduce into a pap for the larvæ to feast on. I have tried to bring up larvæ myself on fly-paste. The experiment was tried on a nest of Polistes gallica, the wasp which fixes her little rose-shaped nest of gray paper cells on the bough of some shrub. ”

“ Both Réaumur and the younger Huber studied the proceedings of the common wasp in the manner which has been so successful in observing bees—by means of glazed hives, and other contrivances. In this, these naturalists were greatly aided by the extreme affection of wasps for their young; for though their nest is carried off, or even cut in various directions, and exposed to the light, they never desert it, nor relax their attention to their progeny. ”

“ As I shall mention elsewhere, this is the Fly that lays her eggs on the game the Wasp puts in the nest for her own baby; and the Fly’s offspring eat the food of the Wasp-grub, and sometimes eat the grub itself, if provisions are scarce. The way the Fly manages her business is interesting. She never enters the Wasp’s burrow, but she waits with the greatest patience for the moment when the Wasp dives into her home, with her game clasped between her legs. ”

“ She chose a place and kept to it, her steady labor being interrupted only by occasional visits to the spider; but it took her fifty minutes to complete the nest. When finished it was a small gallery running down obliquely for an inch and a half into the ground.
The only habit that this species can claim as peculiar to itself is the strange and useless one of filling up the partly made nests that it is about to abandon. We have never seen the sense of order carried to so high a point in any other wasp. ”

“ Do you think a wasp could make one alone? No, these are social wasps; that is, a great many live together. There are males, females, and workers. Some day we shall tell you how the wasps form their colony, but for this lesson we want you to study the nest. [552]
Notice the envelope which covers the cells. How many layers of paper are there in it? We might call each layer a clapboard.
Can you see any difference in the direction of the outside layers on top of the nest and those which are below?
Fig. 354. Interior arrangement of white-faced hornet's nest. ”