1276 



Ri'RAL School Leaflet 



WASPS 



Anna Botsford Comstock 



The wasps and the bees are near relatives; many unobserving persons 

 do not know them apart. The writer had some poHte neighbors once 

 who came to her and told her apologetically that her bees had swarmed 

 into their kitchen and were helping themselves to preserves that were 

 being made. She hastened to the besieged kitchen and found that the 

 neighbors did not know bees from yellow jackets, for there were only 

 wasps taking toll of preserves in that kitchen. Yet honeybees and yellow 

 jackets are very unlike. The bee is fuzzy and broad-waisted, while the 

 yellow jacket is polished and narrow-waisted. However, the feature by 



which entomologists always distinguish 

 bees from wasps is the pollen basket 

 \\'ith which the bee is provided on each 



f^l/T^^^^JUF °^ ^^^ hind legs. Wasps never have 



these baskets. 



There are many kinds of wasps. In 

 general they belong to two groups, the 

 solitary and the social. 



The solitary wasps. — The solitary wasps 

 are so called because each family lives by 

 ^itself; that is, the mother wasp makes a 

 nest for her young in the spring, and 

 only the members of one family grow 

 up together. The mud daubers, the 

 mason wasps, the carpenter wasps, and the 

 digger wasps are all solitary. Their wings 

 when closed lie folded across the back. 

 The mud dauber may be used to illustrate the habits of the soHtary 

 wasps. The female is a black slender creatiire with blue-purple, irides- 

 cent wings, and is very common in New York State. She builds her nest 

 of mud, which she finds in puddles and on muddy roadsides. She collects 

 a pellet of mud in her jaws and by mixing it with saliva changes it to cement. 

 She plasters these soft pellets under the roof boards of some shed or garret. 

 She has to make many trips in building a cell, which needs to be an inch 

 long and perhaps a half inch in width. The walls are about one-eighth 

 of an inch thick; and, while the outside may be rough, the inside is very 

 smooth. When one of these tubes is finished except for an opening left 

 at one end, the mud dauber changes her labors and starts off spider 

 hunting. As soon as she sees a spider hanging snugly in its web, she 

 pounces down on it and stings it at just the right place in its nervous system 

 to paralyze it but not to kill it. In her jaws she carries the helpless spider 



Yell 07V jacket and nest 



