WASPS, SOCIAL AND SOLITARY 



blackberry bushes ; but at this time we were so much 

 absorbed in Crabro stirpicola that we never followed 

 them to their homes. 



Rubrocinctum was more conveniently studied, and 

 through July and August we watched the comings 

 and goings of these little wasps. They were very good- 

 tempered, never resenting our close proximity nor our 

 interference with their housekeeping. By working hard 

 they could prepare a nest, store it with spiders, and seal 

 it up all in the same day. This we have seen them do in 

 several instances. In other cases the same operation 

 takes three or four days. In the second summer that we 

 worked with them we found one very energetic mother 

 that stored four nests in one day. It had rained hard 

 on the twenty- sixth of July, and no wasp works in such 

 weather. On the afternoon of the twenty-seventh we 

 took a straw just as the little mother was bringing in a 

 spider. We opened it and found that the innermost cell 

 contained eight Epeirids, with an egg on the abdomen 

 of the last one taken in; the second cell was provisioned 

 with ten spiders, with the egg on the seventh, so that 

 three had been brought in after it was laid; the third 

 cell had the egg on the last spider, as did also the fourth. 

 All of these eggs hatched on the twenty-ninth, the two 

 outer ones, that were laid last, between eight and nine 

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