THE BUTTERFLY AND ITS ALLIES 33 



regurgitated into the cells. The nature of the transfor- 

 mation of the nectar in the crop of the bee is not precisely 

 known, but it is not great enough to prevent the character- 

 istic flavors of the flowers of the buckwheat, orange, and 

 so on, from being retained in the honey. The bee-bread 

 is made from the pollen of the flowers, which is brought 

 into the hive on the hind legs of the workers. When a 

 new queen is needed for the colony, and the queen cells 

 are empty, one may be produced by the workers in the fol- 

 lowing manner : The partitions between three worker cells 

 are destroyed and two of the embryos are killed. The 

 enlarged cell is rilled with a special nutritive compound 

 manufactured by the workers and known as royal jelly. 

 The remaining embryo, fed upon this especially nutritious 

 jelly, develops, not into a worker, but into a queen. 



Of the true wasps ( Vespidie ! ), some are solitary; others, 

 like certain of the bees, rear their families in the nests 

 of other species (guest-wasps) ; while still 

 others are social. The last group includes 

 our best-known species. The colony of 

 social wasps contains males, females, and 

 workers. As in the case of bumblebees, 

 only the females survive the winter, and in 

 the spring they build small nests and lay 



worker eggs. The workers, when grown, FIG. re. Poiistcs. 

 enlarge the nest and care for the numerous Slightly reduced. 



, ,, n Photo, by W. H. 



progeny ot the queen. Our social wasps c. P. 

 belong either to the p-enus Polistes, 2 which 



o o 



includes the ordinary black, brown, or yellow bodied 



wasps, which build mushroom-shaped nests behind window 



blinds and under boards (Fig. 32), or to the genus Vespa, 



1 From vespa, wasp. 2 TroXto-r^s, founder of a city. 



D 



