BENEFICIAL INSECTS 



24s 



wonderful. The first brood consists of small-sized workers, 

 and, as these take up the labors of nest-building and 

 food-bringing, larger workers are produced. Finally, 

 in the early autumn a generation of males and females is 

 produced, and the queens hibernate, to repeat the story 

 the following year. The queens often crawl into attics to 

 spend the winter, and a few are sometimes found in the 

 old nests. A queen might be taken in the fall or early in 

 the spring, and if provided with paper pulp, honey, and 

 abundance of insect food, she would quite probably build a 

 nest and afford a most instructive demonstration of insect 

 life. The white-faced hornet is especially interesting 

 from the fact that the suggestion for making paper from 

 wood pulp, which is now such an extensive industry, was 

 probably obtained directly from its wonderful nest. 



The specimen figured below, from which one side has 

 been cut to show internal arrangement, was built by the 

 queen before any of her brood had come to her aid. 



