Solitary Bees and Wasps 



produced in the victim by the stinging, some dying and 

 others living for a long time though nearly motionless." 



Every imaginable variation of the nesting and food- 

 storing habits of the sand-wasps may be found amongst 

 their near relatives. One solitary wasp lays in a store of 

 cockroaches ; its nest is always built in walls between the 

 crevices of the stones, and the entrance thereto is usually 

 large enough to admit an average-sized cockroach. Now 

 the cockroach, for reasons which it is outside our province 

 to discuss, is very variable in size in short, it grows and 

 unlike the wasp which preys upon it, or the house-fly or 

 the dragon-fly, is not of the same dimensions when it 

 makes its entrance into the world as when it makes its 

 exit. This is awkward for the wasp, for a day assuredly 

 arrives when its prey is too large to be dragged into the 

 nest. Such a happening, however, does not daunt the 

 little huntress. Her first act is to snip off the horny wing- 

 cases of her victim, thereby allowing its body to be com- 

 pressed. Then probably a leg will become jammed in 

 the doorway and cause an obstruction ; again the wasp is 

 equal to the occasion and amputates the offending limb, 

 and so on, till finally the sadly dismembered cockroach 

 is safely within the burrow. '. 



Another of these wasps does not seem to have fully 

 learned the art of completely paralysing the creatures 

 destined for the food of its grubs. Moreover, it is obvi- 

 ously conscious of its shortcomings, therefore the spiders 

 on which it preys suffer amputation of their legs, so that, 

 should they recover consciousness, they are unable to 

 escape from the nest. The case of yet another of these 

 wasps is even more hopeless, at least it would be hopeless 

 but for the ingenuity of the mother wasp. As one writer 

 aptly puts it, she has not inherited from her ancestors the 

 receipt for the paralysing sting. It is impossible, there- 

 fore, for this wasp to lay up a store of living food. She 

 builds her nest somewhat after the fashion of the sand- 

 wasp and deposits her eggs therein. At the time the 



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