264] 



The Wonderful Ways of Insects and Spiders 



attach their homes to eaves or barn roofs or locate them in 

 cavities in the ground or in tree trunks. 



How the Wasp Builds Its Paper Nest: If you observe these wasps 

 when they are busy with their home construction, you will see 

 them flying off in search of weathered wood or cut wood fibers 

 in a post, an unpainted old building, or a piece of a dead tree 

 trunk. From something of this sort, a wasp builder bites and 

 tears the fiber with its mandibles, taking enough to form a pellet 

 about an eighth of an inch across the middle. It tucks the pellet 

 under its chin and chews until the wood is sufficiently turned into 

 a mass of doughy pulp. 



STYLES IN WASP ARCHITECTURE 



When wasps are mentioned, most of us immediately think of their stinging habits. 

 Actually, their abilities as builders are far more remarkable. The "paper" wasp 

 (upper left) chews wood into paper pulp for its nest. The mud-dauber wasps 

 (right) mix mud and saliva to mortar their nests. 



The insect now returns to the nest and, alighting astride an 

 unfinished layer of paper, presses down the new ball of pulp, 

 biting it to fasten it in place. Then the wasp walks slowly back- 



