THE MONSTERS OF OUR BACK YARDS 



60i 



imperfect focus, and it took me some 

 time to realize that I was looking into 

 the eyes of a bald-faced hornet, and that, 

 instead of being an enemy, she is of all 

 the fiy-destroyers which frequent the 

 house perhaps the most efficient, pounc- 

 ing upon the flies with murderous vo- 

 racity, tearing off their heads and legs 

 and wings and macerating their bodies 

 to a pulp to feed the hungry grub-like 

 baby hornets which are hatching out in 

 the paper nest over the front door. 



Does this picture represent, I wonder, 

 one of the nightmare visions which haunt 

 the dreams of baby flies? 



There is no wild creature in the north- 

 ern United States that a man will run 

 away from so fast as from a bald-faced 

 hornet. 



At the tip of her flexible armor-plated 

 abdomen is the poison- fed stiletto with 

 which she paralyzes her prey or drives 

 off enemies from the nest. 



Her six powerful legs are spined to 

 help her. no doubt, in climbing over the 

 smooth surfaces of flowers and twigs. 

 She has two kinds of eyes — three lens- 

 shaped ones on top of her head and two 

 marvelous compound ones composed of 

 hundreds of little lenses, which take up 

 half the head. Just what she uses each 

 kind for is still unknown. 



From her forehead hang ringed anten- 

 nae, which doubtless are the organs with 

 which she scents the presence of her 

 prey, and they may also help her find her 

 way about. 



Her massive jaws lie below her eyes 

 and look like shears with jagged edges ; 

 they are meant for crushing, not for 

 grinding, and with these she tears to 

 pieces bits of wood and cements the parti- 

 cles together with the sticky secretion of 

 her salivary glands, making thus the 

 combs and shelter of her wood-pulp pa- 

 per nest. 



She is an undeveloped female, but with 

 the professional care of a baby's nurse 

 she tends her sister hornets in the nest. 

 On the wing, from daylight to dark, she 

 scours the country for the flies and other 

 insects with which to feed the young. 



Her life is ended by the autumn, for 

 she feels the cold as all our insects do, 



and it is left to a few of the young queens 

 to carry on the species. 



There is something fascinating in the 

 picture of the young queen hornet, after 

 mating is over and all her relatives are 

 dead, crawling away beneath some log to 

 pass there the long cold winter, and then 

 alone, when sj^ring has come, emerging 

 from her sleep, the only survivor of her 

 race, to build, unaided even by her mate, 

 the beginning of a nest just large enough 

 to hold her first-laid eggs. From these 

 hatch out the grubs, which later, after 

 days of feeding, emerge as workers, un- 

 developed females, and help build up 

 around her a colony of hundreds of busy 

 hornets. 



THE YELLOW j.ACKET (VespQ Carolina), 

 PAGE 604 



All the readers of the N.\tion.\l Geo- 

 graphic Magazine have probably had 

 a more intimate acquaintance with the 

 creature shown on page 604 than I can 

 possibly give by any picture. It is the 

 ordinary yellow jacket of our fields. 



THE SOLITARY LEAF-CUTTIXG BEE (MegO- 



chile brevis), pages 606 and 607 



The sting or "stinger" of a bee is in- 

 deed a most wonderful piece of mechan- 

 ism. At the base, inside the body of 

 the bee, lie bars or levers, operated by 

 muscles, which push the darts out and 

 draw them in. The poison sac lies just 

 behind this mechanism and pours the 

 poison into a set of cup-like valves, from 

 which it escapes into the wound along 

 longitudinal groves in the sting like 

 grease along the piston of an engine. 



The sting itself is not, then, hollow, 

 like the spider's poison fang. 



Unlike the social honey-bees, this bee 

 leads a solitary life. With her strong, 

 saw-like jaws the female makes her bur- 

 row in soft wood and lines it with bits 

 of leaf which she has cut in circles from 

 the roses and other plants ; then, making 

 a ball from the pollen and nectar which 

 she has gathered, she puts it at the bot- 

 tom of the burrow, lays an eg^g upon it, 

 and with a wad of leaves securely shuts 

 it in ; over this again lays down another 

 food ball, with its corresponding egg, and 

 so on until the burrow is full. 



