They seem to be upon a higher plane of social life than are the true ants, with which they are not in any way related, for the members of a species seem all to be quite friendly towards each other even though they may come from widely different nests. This is never true of ants.
Their queens are strange, egg-laying machines as large as a man’s thumb, and they lay an egg a second for nobody knows how long.
The workers shun the light and make long, covered ways of mud in which they go from place to place. With their untiring energy they honeycomb the building timbers of houses and ships in the tropics, making mere hollow shells of them, and so causing disasters of all kinds.
Some of their soldiers have mandibles so strong and sharp as to drive away all animals and make them formidable enemies of man, and some have squirt guns in their heads with which they spray their enemies with an obnoxious fluid.
This tiny representative is all we have in Maryland, but though so small and quiet in his habits he does great work among the pine stumps of my place. The stump of any pine that is felled one year can be kicked out the next, honeycombed with the chambered runways of this creature. Beware lest any pine timbers of your house are near the ground and become infested with termites.
THE STINGING INSECTS
(Hymenoptera)
This order is another one in which it takes an entomologist to see the characteristic likenesses in the various species of insects composing it. They all have membranous wings, and all the females have either a saw, an ovipositor or a sting at the tip of the abdomen. One may say, indeed, that practically all the stinging insects are in this order.