THE ANTS, BEES, AND WASPS 79 



From the time the workers take up the tasks of the nest 

 the female is left free to devote all her energies to laying 

 eggs, and the nest is rapidly made larger by the workers. 

 Toward September males and females appear from the 

 cells, which up to this time have produced only workers. 

 The males die soon after mating. On the approach of cold 

 weather, the workers also die, and only females remain to 

 hibernate and begin a new nest the next spring. 



Another type of nest, in which the horizontal layers are 

 inclosed in a thin envelope, is made by the somewhat 

 larger and stouter-bodied wasps (Ves'pa, Fig. 57) commonly 

 known as hornets. These wasps are generally conspicuously 

 marked with yellow, and their nests may be a foot and a half 

 in diameter. 



The social wasps are the original paper-makers of the 

 world. The first suggestion as to the manufacture of paper 

 by man may have come from watching the work of these 

 insects, though the necessary steps may well have been 

 taken without such suggestion, as the use of the leaves of 

 palms and the bark of several trees is still common in China 

 and India. It is interesting to note that though the wasps 

 were the original inventors of paper, they have, in some 

 cases, learned to take advantage of man's present greater 

 facilities for its manufacture, thus saving themselves the 

 trouble of preparing the raw materials. 



Solitary Wasps. Those wasps which are solitary in habit 

 make nests in various situations and of different materials 

 and store them with food, generally insects and spiders. 

 These they often sting so as to paralyze but not to kill them. 

 Each species has its own method of providing food, and 

 each keeps pretty closely to the same material for nest- 

 building. Thus the common mud dauber (Scel'iphron, 

 Fig. 54), seen flying about on sunny days over the muddy 

 edges of puddles and pools, builds its nests of clay and pro- 



