POTENT PERSONALITIES- WASPS AND HORNETS 



67 



transfiguration: soon a slim, 



I'hdtoKraph by Paul Griswold Howes 

 WINGED BEAUTY WILL APPEAR 



If the page is turned so the left side is at the bottom, the dehcate pupa of a paper wasp may 

 be seerr more readily. Plainly visible are the huge eye, the two front lugs, and the tiny transparent 

 wing in front of the long rear leg. In a few days the larva (right), already grown fat on insects, 

 will likewise pass through the pupa stage and emerge a sleek and slender wasp. (Greatly enlarged.) 



Most obnoxiously familiar of our social 

 wasps are the various hornets, of which 

 ten different sorts live in the northeastern 

 United States. Two of these are shiftless 

 racketeers, living at the expense of hard- 

 working relatives. 



If curiosity should induce you to observe 

 the activities of hornets, vou would soon 

 discover that all of them are insect feeders. 

 They catch insects of very many different 

 kinds, carve them up into steaks and chops 

 of the proper size or chew them up into a 

 sort of pudding, and feed them to their 

 young ones. It is surprising to find how 

 many noxious insects every day disappear 

 into a hornets' nest. 



Commonest of our native hornets is 

 the little yellow jacket (Color Plate V, 

 upper) that builds its nest usually in the 

 ground, just where you are likely to step 

 on it. Sometimes it builds in an old tree 

 stump, and occasionally under the eaves 

 of buildings. We have another kind much 

 like it and equally common, and farther 

 south a third, Vespula squamosa (Plate 

 IV, fig. 6). 



The yellow jackets feed their young on 



insects of various kinds, including some- 

 times butterflies, which they dismember 

 with skill and chew into a pulp. A yellow 

 jacket catching a cabbage white butterfly is 

 shown in Plate \ , upper. 



A larger hornet, Vespa crahro, introduced 

 from Europe and now widespread in the 

 eastern United States, has the reprehensi- 

 ble habit of gnawing twigs of trees, espe- 

 cially the birch, and is sometimes injurious 

 to the lilac. 



Larger than the native yellow jackets and 

 black and white is the white-faced hornet 

 that builds its paper nest in trees or bushes, 

 or about houses. The nest is often very 

 large, as much as two feet in length, and 

 may contain several hundred individuals 

 (pages 68, 70, 71 and Plate \, upper). 



INTRUDERS IN A HORNETS' NEST 



This hornet feeds its young chiefly on 

 flies, especially on houseflies, Musca do- 

 mestka ; that is why you so often see it 

 about stables, and about the kitchen door. 

 After catching a fly it chews it into a pulp, 

 commonly suspending itself by one hind leg 

 while doing so (Plate V, upper, right). 



