SOCIAL LIFE OF WASPS 31 



are going better, yet not too well, the young females 

 remaining at home have to work so hard and on 

 such scanty food that their reproductivity is 

 hindered. Although fertilized they are slow to lay. 

 They continue helping their mother and they thus 

 almost originate a caste of "workers"! Such 

 polygynous or many-queened communities are 

 restricted to warm countries where nesting continues 

 all the year round. In cold countries the com- 

 munities are always monogynous, i.e. there is but 

 one functional queen. The workers remain more or 

 less completely sterile. The queens of next year 

 are the young females hatched near the end of the 

 season, which, as we have already mentioned, spend 

 the winter in safe retreats. It is interesting to 

 think that the establishment of the monogynous 

 society was probably Northern and relatively recent, 

 being imposed upon wasps by climatic conditions. 

 It is interesting also, though very grim, to recognize 

 that the general massacre of the wasp-larvae in 

 autumn, when further nurture is hopeless, is not 

 incongruent with the " cecotrophobiosis." For the 

 young creatures that can no longer furnish elixir 

 are not to be wasted. They are eaten up, and it is 

 on the strength of them that the wintering young 

 queens are able to sleep for many days without 

 food, and to begin the cycle again next spring. 

 It is altogether a very economical kind of domestic 

 economy. 



