434 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



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Looking a wasp 

 in the face. 



What a harlequin the wasp is, in her costume of yellow and black! 

 Often in the invertebrate world these colors mean "sit up and take 

 notice," and the wasp's costume is no exception. 

 Whoever has had any experience in meddling with 

 yellow-jackets, avoids acquaintance with all yellow 

 and black insects. Yet we must confess that the lady 

 wasp has good taste in dress. The yellow cross bands 

 on her black skirt are scalloped, and, in fact, all her 

 yellow is put on in a most chic manner; she, being 

 slender, can well afford to dress in roundwise stripes, 

 and she folds her wings prettily like a fan, and not over 

 her back like the mud wasp, which would cover her decorations. There 

 is a sensation coming to the one who, armed with a lens, looks a wasp in the 

 face ; she always does her hair pompadour, and the yellow is here put on 

 with a most bizarre effect, in points and arabesques. Even her jaws are 

 yellow with black borders and black notches. Her antennae are velvety 

 black, her legs are yellow, and her antennae comb, on her wrist, is a real 

 comb and quite ornate. 



In the nest which we studied in late August, the 

 queen cells were just being developed. They were placed 

 in a story all by themselves, and they were a third larger 

 than the cells of the workers. The queen of this nest was 

 a most majestic wasp, fully twice as large as any of her 

 subjects; her face was entirely black, and the yellow 

 bands on her long abdomen were of quite a different pat- 

 tern than those on the workers ; her sting was not so long 

 in proportion, but I must confess it looked efficient. In 

 fact, a yellow-jacket's sting is a formidable looking spear 

 when seen through a microscope, since it has on one side some backward 

 projecting barbs, meant to hold it firm when driving home the thrust. 



While wasps are fond of honey and other sweets, they are also fond of 

 animal food and eat a great many insects, benefiting us greatly by 

 destroying mosquitoes and flies. As no food is stored for their winter use, 

 all wasps excepting the queens die of the cold. The queens crawl away 

 to protected places and seem to be able to withstand the rigors of winter; 

 each queen, in the spring, makes a little comb of a few cells, covering it 

 with a thin layer of paper. She then laj^s eggs in these cells and gathers 

 food for the young; but when these first members of the family, which are 

 always workers, come to maturity, they take upon themselves the work 

 of enlarging the nest and caring for the young. After that, the queen 

 devotes her energies to laying eggs. 



Wasps enlarge their houses by cutting away the paper from the inside 

 of the covering, to give more room for building the combs wider; to com- 

 pensate for this, they build additional layers on the outside of the nest. 

 Thus it is, that every wasp's nest, however large, began as a little comb of 

 a few cells and was enlarged to meet the needs of the rapidly glowing 

 family. Ordinarily the nest made one year is not used again. 



The antenna- 

 comb on the wrist 

 of my Lady Wasp 



