Wasps and Ants 39 



wasps, which at once set themselves to making 

 new cells. Thenceforward the nest grows mag- 

 ically. Relieved of family cares, the queen 

 gives her whole mind and strength to egg-lay- 

 ing. Her elder children feed and care for the 

 younger ones as they themselves were cared 

 for. Midsummer often sees a nest with a 

 thousand cells. Since the first cells are used 

 over and over that gives some idea of a wasp- 

 colony's late summer strength. Nests with 

 many thousand cells are not uncommon. 

 Sometimes a new pillar is built out from the 

 middle of the first paper comb, and another 

 and bigger nest hung below it. Oftener it 

 happens that a queen is somehow destroyed 

 while her first brood is in cell. Then her 

 deserted nest stands the summer through no 

 bigger than three fingers, a piteous monument 

 to frustrated maternity. In the peopled nests, 

 late summer sees broods of drones and new 

 queens. They reach maturity only a little 

 time before frost. When frost threatens, the 

 queens and the workers quit the nest, leaving 

 the poor drones and the immature brood to 

 starve. The workers shift for themselves 

 until cold makes an end of them, while the 

 queens crawl away and hide themselves in 

 winter quarters. Earth-nesting wasps are re- 

 ported to drag out their young at the approach 

 of frost, and strew them upon the ground where 



