COMMUNAL LIFE 



Our final color experiment was to let the blue paper 

 remain for a day or two, giving time for all the wasps to 

 become familiar with it, and then to leave it on the 

 ground a foot and a half away, while replacing it with 

 yellow. This gave a false nest surrounded by the color 

 that they had been associating with the entrance, and a 

 true nest surrounded by a new color. In the next ten 

 minutes two hundred and seventy wasps came home, and 

 every one of them went to the false nest. Many circled 

 above it, others entered the hole in the paper, and some 

 began to excavate, and made quite a depression in the 

 ground; but gradually they found their way home. 

 Three hours later seventy-six wasps entered the false 

 nest in five minutes, and at evening they were still visiting 

 it in goodly numbers ; but on the next day we saw only 

 two that were deceived. 



On successive days we substituted red for yellow, 

 green for red, and so on, always with similar results, 

 although the wasps became more and more accustomed 

 to the vicissitudes of their life, and after a time seemed to 

 look for the hole itself without relying upon the color to 

 guide them. They found their nest under a color new to 

 them much more readily than when the paper was taken 

 entirely away and the ground left exposed. Once when 

 the green paper was around their nest, and the wind 

 7 



