SOCIAL LIFE OF WASPS 31 
are going better, yet not too well, the young females 
remaining at home have to work so hard and on 
such scanty food that their reproductivity is 
hindered. Although fertilized they are slow to lay. 
They continue helping their mother—and they thus 
almost originate a caste of “workers”! Such 
polygynous or many-queened communities are 
restricted to warm countries where nesting continues 
all the year round. In cold countries the com- 
munities are always monogynous, i.e. there is but 
one functional queen. The workers remain more or 
less completely sterile. The queens of next year 
are the young females hatched near the end of the 
season, which, as we have already mentioned, spend 
the winter in safe retreats. It is interesting to 
think that the establishment of the monogynous 
society was probably Northern and relatively recent, 
being imposed upon wasps by climatic conditions. 
It is interesting also, though very grim, to recognize 
that the general massacre of the wasp-larve in 
autumn, when further nurture is hopeless, is not 
incongruent with the “cecotrophobiosis.”’ For the 
young creatures that can no longer furnish elixir 
are not to be wasted. They are eaten up, and it is 
on the strength of them that the wintering young 
queens are able to sleep for many days without 
food, and to begin the cycle again next spring. 
It is altogether a very economical kind of domestic 
economy. 
