THE ONE-BANDED DAUBER 61 



clearing nearby. Each pellet was tamped and arranged with great 

 care, during which time the wasp buzzed continually and held her 

 abdomen at the end of its long petiole high in the air, as a balance 

 weight to the lowered head on the other end. The forelegs were used 

 as much as the mandibles, thus her dumbbell-like body swung pivoted 

 upon the central pair of legs. 



When the foundations were laid she proceeded with the cell itself, 

 bringing thirty loads of mud per hour. In a little over two hours 

 the cell was complete, a neatly rounded tube, thirty millimeters long 

 and sixteen millimeters in diameter, the result of some sixty-five loads 

 of mortar. 



In fashioning the tube, the first few pellets were deposited side by 

 side and raised into a semi-circular mound, or half disk stood on end. 

 Here again the work was accomplished with her mandibles and 

 forelegs. The clay was pinched up between the tarsi and then shaped 

 principally with the mandibles, which acted like a pair of flattened 

 tongs. When the disk was finished the successive loads of mud were 

 pressed against its inner surface, usually at one side and then moulded 

 into a narrow ridge running around its circumference. Thereafter 

 each pellet was fashioned into a ribbon of plaster placed against the 

 side of the preceding layer. When the job was finished these indi- 

 vidual layers were quite visible so that the separate rings of which the 

 nest was constructed could easily be counted. 



In coming to her nest the wasp often experienced great difficulty 

 in locating it. She would approach the brick pillar with her mortar 

 pellet, circle the column once and then alight, as a general rule, some 

 distance above or below the nest. A thorough inspection of the spot 

 to which her general sense of direction brought her, would follow. 

 This inspection never extended beyond one or two bricks at most. 

 Finding the cell missing, she would take wing, circle the pillar once 

 more and alight in a new location. Sometimes this performance was 



