66 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



thorities on bees 

 and wasps. She 

 was puzzled. 

 They were not 

 like any she had 

 ever seen, and no 

 published de- 

 scriptions fitted 

 them. They 

 proved to be a 

 previously un- 

 known kind. Dr. 

 Joseph Bequaert 

 of Harvard has 

 recently named 

 them Odynerus 

 tempiferus var. 

 ma do. They are 

 here figured for 

 the first time 

 (Color Plate II, 

 lower). 



After all the 

 wasps had dug 

 their way out, the 

 nest was cut in 

 two across the 

 middle. It was 

 made up of 21 

 cells, each of 

 which had been 

 carefully formed 

 by the mother 

 wasp, provisioned 

 with paralvzed 

 caterpillars, fur- 

 nished with an 

 egg and sealed. 

 After the twenty- 

 one were com- 

 pleted the mass 

 had been care- 

 fully smoothed 

 over with addi- 

 tional mud and a few large, shining quartz 

 grains had been cemented to it, apparently 

 bv wav of ornament. 



Plintotifaph by Paul Griswold Howes 

 RARELY DOES THE CAMERA CATCH A PAPER WASP QUEEN IN THE 

 ACT OF LAYING AN EGG 



Light has been reflected deep into the cell, making visible the oval egg, which 

 is cemented into place in the unfinished paper cell. (Photograph greatly en- 

 larged.) Later a grub will hatch and grow (opposite page and p. 69). 



There are many different kinds and styles 

 of these. The one shown in Plate II was 

 found by Mr. David I. Bushnell, Jr., in 

 193S, near Fredericksburg, Virginia. It is 

 larger than those usually seen. 



In order to find out the kind of wasp 

 that made it, I kept it through the winter 

 in my house. In jMarch the wasps emerged, 

 digging their way out through the mud 

 walls. First came four males, and about 

 ten days later appeared the first females, 

 larger than their brothers. 



What were they? I showed them to Miss 

 Grace Sandhouse, one of the leading au- 



HORNETS LIVE 



ON INSECT STE.4KS 



the jug-makers, the 

 wasps are 



digger 



Bushnell's wasp, 

 mud daubers, and the 

 representatives of what are known as soli- 

 tary wasps; each female, alone and unas- 

 sisted, provides for her young. 



But many wasps are social, living in com- 

 munities of various sizes, usually with a 

 single egg-producing female and several or 

 many "workers," or imdeveloped females. 



