INSECT SOCIOLOGY 201 



stones or in other convenient hiding places, and come 

 out in the spring, each to found then a family colony or 

 community. Finding a deserted field-mouse's nest or 

 some natural small hole or crevice in the ground, the 

 queen brings to it a small mass of flower pollen and 

 nectar and lays a few eggs on this food mass. As the 

 eggs hatch the issuing grubs (larvae) begin eating the 

 stored food and do this in such a way as to form for each 

 a little irregular cell, in which, when finished with their 

 feeding, they pupate and from which they finally issue 

 as full-fledged worker (infertile female) bumble-bees. 



These workers now bring more mixed pollen and 

 nectar, the queen lays more eggs from which new 

 workers are produced, and this process continues 

 through the summer until there is a large colony (or 

 family) of bees. In the autumn some males and fe- 

 males are produced, which fly out and find mates, the 

 old queen and workers die, and the mated females 

 (now "queens") hide themselves to pass over the 

 winter and come out in the next spring to found new 

 family communities. 



This is the way also in which the social wasps, the 

 hornets and yellowjackets, found their family communi- 

 which live in large wood-pulp paper nests in the 

 ground or hanging from branches or the eaves of houses 

 and out-buildings. Each queen wasp, coming out 

 from her winter hiding place, makes a little paper 

 "queen nest," composed of a few interior cells enclosed 

 in one or two layers of wood-pulp paper which she makes 

 by biting off and chewing up bits of old wood. In the 

 ceils of this queen nest eggs are laid by the queen from 



