34Q POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



while Polistes is smaller and more timid and its colonies never reach 

 such formidable dimensions as those of Vespa. 



Here, as in the other genera, the colony consists of three kinds of 

 individuals — males, females and workers or neuters, and is founded 

 usually* by a single female somewhat improperly called the queen. 

 She, with perhaps several other females, is the sole survivor of a 

 colony of the previous season, and has passed the winter in some warm 

 crevice or sheltered corner. During the first warm days of spring, she 

 may be seen seeking a suitable nesting-place and, this found, she begins 

 the construction of the nest, which has the appearance represented in 

 the accompanying figure. Each cell contains an egg suspended near 

 its apex by the aboral end, and in the course of a few days this egg 

 develops into a worm-like feeding larva. The queen works incessantly 

 when the weather permits, increasing the number of cells, lengthening 

 the cells already there and strengthening the stalk which supports the 

 whole, so that when, at the end of six weeks — the first workers emerge, 

 the nest may comprise as many as forty or fifty cells. From this time 

 the workers gradually assume all the duties of the colony except the 

 egg laying,f though, as far as I have observed, in a spirit \ far different 

 from that of the queen. Thus, one nest, which at the beginning of July 

 was made up of forty-three cells, and represented the work of a single 

 queen or mother, contained at the end of the season only one hundred 

 and twenty-seven cells, the eighty-four additional cells being presum- 

 ably the product of at least fifty workers which had emerged during the 

 summer months. Toward the latter part of August and early Sep- 

 tember the males and females appear, and the nests are more and more 

 deserted for the flowers and fruits of autumn. Here the males and 

 females mate, the workers and males linger through the warmer days, 

 while the fertilized females alone survive the winter and lay the 

 foundation of the new colony in the spring. 



The Site of the Nest. 

 This varies for different localities and to a certain extent in differ- 

 ent species. In Wisconsin, where most of these studies were made, the 



* The queens usually work singly, but in three cases two wasps were 

 observed associating in the construction of the same nest. These may have 

 represented a queen and a worker that had accidentally survived the winter. 

 It is difficult to see how a partnership of queens could be formed, since the 

 owner of a nest strongly resents the intrusion of another wasp, expelling her 

 from the scene with the utmost ferocity. 



t The careful researches of Siebold and Marchal show that even this func- 

 tion is assumed by the workers in case of the death of the queen. 



J In writing a paper of this nature it is somewhat difficult to avoid mislead- 

 ing 'anthropomorphisms,' and it may be well to state once for all that the 

 occasional use of expressions similar to the above is purely figurative and for 

 the purpose of avoiding awkward circumlocutions. 



