48 



The Ottawa Naturalist 



[Vol. XXXII. 



the paper manufactured by these subterranean species, 

 while amply good enough for the protected situation, 

 is but a poor coarse material compared to the strong 

 flexible product of the kinds that suspend their 

 familiar silver-grey nests in trees. Of the seven or 

 eight species of Vespa occurring in the Ottawa 

 district, the commonest bears the sinister name of 

 Vespa diabolica; but our largest sized representative 

 of the genus, found right across the continent from 

 Nova Scotia to British Columbia, is Vespa 

 maculata, popularly known as the bald-faced hornet, 

 and it may be taken as typical of the most accom- 

 plished paper-makers. 



]. maculata. which is heavy-bodied for a wasp, 

 wears the traditional wasp livery of buff and black, 

 and owes its popular name to the pale yellow mark- 

 ings on its face. As is usually the case among the 

 social Hymenoptera, the males are larger than the 

 workers, and the queens are larger than the males. 

 The bald-face hornet's chief mental characteristics 

 are a very short temper and an extreme intol- 

 erance of strangers near its nest; and it is armed 

 with a powerful sting as many people can feel- 

 ingly testify. Indeed, a friend who sometimes bears 

 me company on biological expeditions, and who is 

 not at all of a timid disposition, suffers from what 

 may be termed "wasp-shock". Some years ago he 

 incautiously sat down near a hornets' nest, and was 

 severely stung. And now, so far from assisting in 

 the observation of Vespan economy, the very sight 

 of a nest causes him in the German war-office 

 term to retire promptly to a prepared position 

 in the rear. Contrasted with the complicated 

 activities of the honey bee or the still more 

 marvellous organization of the ant societies, the 

 life history of a colony of V . maculata is com- 

 paratively simple. It is rather doubtfully stated that 

 males and workers may sometimes hibernate in the 

 nest, but in general it appears to be only the young 

 fertilized queens that live over winter, sheltering 

 under bark or in rotten logs. On several occasions 

 in the early spring, I have found torpid queens in 

 such situations, but so exposed to the winter cold, 

 that it was a mystery to me how they had survived. 

 Many of the invertebrates and some of the lower 

 vertebrates too are extraordinarily resistant to cold. 

 A degree of frost that would be absolutely fatal to 

 a mammal, has no more effect on some insects than 

 to render them temporarily torpid, and on the first 

 rise in temperature, they are as active as ever. 



Emerging from her winter quarters with the first 

 fine weather of spring, each queen sets to work to 

 found a colony. She seeks a sound but weather- 

 beaten surface of wood, and working backwards in 

 the direction of the grain, with her strong jaws she 

 gnaws off the outside fibres along a narrow strip. 



leaving the brighter colored wood exposed beneath. 

 The cedar logs that form the verandah posts of a 

 log-cabin on the shore of the Ottawa at Marshall's 

 Bay, are much frequented by wasps for wood pulp. 

 and some parts of the posts are fairly striped with 

 the numerous tiny furrows left by the workers 

 gathering their supplies. The fibres obtained, she 

 chews them into a paste with a viscid secretion from 

 her salivary glands, and with this material she shapes 

 a tiny globular nest about I Yz inches in diameter, 

 consisting of a couple of layers of paper, enclosing 

 a single horizontal comb of eight or ten cells, open- 

 ing downward. The nest is often attached to the 

 eaves of a building, but usually it is hung from the 

 branches of a tree at some height from the ground. 

 The favorite habitat appears to be a swamp, pos- 

 sibly because there is less disturbance there from 

 passersby ; although no passerby with the slightest 

 knowledge of the habits of V. maculata is ever 

 anxious to raise any disturbance with them. The 

 paper is somewhat open in texture, but is remark- 

 ably strong and flexible and is quite waterproof. 

 The sheets are formed by the accretion of tmj' 

 ribbons of pulp, as can easily be traced in the 

 variegated structure. Some Vespas are said to 

 strengthen their paper with herbaceous filaments 

 gathered from growing plants, but I cannot say that 

 I ever observed this myself. The comb material is 

 much thicker and stiffer than the casing paper, and 

 resembles a rather soft cardboard. The light grey 

 color of the paper blends well with the general tone 

 of the bark, and consequently the nest is not a very 

 conspicuous object in the branches. 



When her nest is ready, in each cell of the comb 

 the queen lays an egg which hatches out in a few 

 days. Then for a couple of weeks the devoted 

 mother works early and late to feed her unattractive 

 young grubs first with regurgitated flower nectar, 

 and later with masticated parts of caterpillars until 

 they transform into pupae. The pupal stage is short, 

 and the perfect insects soon emerge. The first 

 broods consist entirely of workers, the queens and 

 males not appearing until towards the end of the 

 season. The young wasps begin work immediately. 

 The beauty of instinct is that it is instinctive. The 

 young workers need no domestic science course to 

 teach them their duties in the nest, but take over 

 the management at once, and the queen, relieved cf 

 all housekeeping responsibility, has nothing to do but 

 lay eggs. 



The workers, whose numbers are constantly in- 

 creased by the advent of new broods, now busily 

 forage for supplies and feed the larvae. And to 

 accommodate the rapidly growing family, they keep 

 tearing away the paper casing inside the nest and 

 adding larger sheets outside. The combs, too, are 



