USE OF ARTIFICIAL NESTS FOR REARING AND 
STUDYING POLISTES WASPS* 
By Stefano Turillazzi 
Istituto di Zoologia, Universita di Firenze, 
Italy 
Introduction 
Artificial honeycombs are habitually used in bee-keeping 
(Chauvin, 1968) but, to the best of my knowledge, such nests have 
never been used with social wasps. Recently the adoption of artificial 
nests was obtained in Polistes (Turillazzi et al., 1979) and the initial 
results of this study suggest that the technique could be of use in 
solving some problems regarding the social life of wasps. This paper 
describes the various kinds of nests used in rearing and studying 
Polistes. 
Materials and Methods 
Specimens of Polistes gallicus (L.) and a few P. omissus (Wey- 
rauch) were offered nests made of either plexiglas, glass, aluminium 
foil, plastic straws (4> 5 mm, length 15 mm) or gelatin capsules (d> 5.2 
and 6 mm, length 13.4 and 15.2 mm, volume 0.3 and 0.4 cm 3 ). Paper 
materials, which the wasps could have easily destroyed or modified, 
were avoided. 
Adults were confined in a limited space with an artificial nest, in 
which larvae from a normal nest had already been transplanted, and 
this forced contact usually persuaded the wasps to adopt the nest. 
After a few hours the nest was transferred to a plexiglass cage (15 cm 
X side) and affixed with the axes of the cells approximately horizontal 
in order to prevent the larvae from falling out. Transplanted pupae 
were kept in place and also protected from being killed by the nurses, 
by a tissue-paper cover over the opening of the cell. The paper was 
then broken by wasps at emergence. 
Adoption was also obtained by substituting for a normal nest made 
directly in a plexiglas cage with an artificial one containing offspring 
from the former nest. In one instance, a foundress was removed from 
* Manuscript received by the editor October 10, 1980. 
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