Wonders of Insect Architecture. 



supplies of wood pulp for the building of the nest, 

 and bringing fresh food supplies for her hungry off- 

 spring. At last the first batch of larvae attain their full 

 size, cease to feed, and spin a silken cover over their 

 cells. Beneath this silken coverlet they change to pupae 

 and undergo their final transformations, and the now 

 perfect wasps gnaw their way out of the cells. As soon 

 as the young wasps have gained sufficient strength they 

 begin the labours of nest-building and feeding the larvae ; 

 the Queen Wasp now has little else to do but deposit 

 eggs in the cells as fast as they are built by the worker 

 wasps, who are really sterile females, incapable of pro- 

 ducing offspring, and very much smaller than the fertile 

 queen. 



Now the colony begins to rapidly increase in numbers, 

 and the cells of the first comb become filled, and more 

 accommodation is required. Using the junction point 

 of these cells of the first tier as a foundation, the worker 

 wasps form a series of pendent columns in exactly the 

 same manner as that built by the queen, and by adding 

 cells to each column they are eventually all united, and 

 form a second tier at just sufficient distance below the 

 first to permit the wasps to cross each other on the upper 

 and lower tier without touching. In this second tier, 

 as in the first, the mouths of the cells all open down- 

 wards and their bases are uppermost, so that the bases 

 of the second tier form a floor on which the wasps can 

 walk without disturbing the larvae in the cells of the 

 first tier above. In this way a third, fourth, and fifth 

 tier are added, all exactly alike as regards the size of 

 the cells in which the great multitude of worker wasps 

 are reared. 



