Of the calamities that befall the Wasp when winter arrives, the worst remains to be told. Foreseeing the approach of failing power, the neuters, hitherto the tenderest of nurses, become savage exterminators:
“Let us leave no orphans,” they say to themselves; “no one would tend them after we are gone. Let us kill everything, belated eggs and larvæ alike. A violent end is preferable to slow death by starvation.”
A massacre of the innocents ensues. Seized by the scruff of the neck and brutally extirpated from their cells, the larvæ are dragged out of the nest and thrown into the vat at the bottom of the crypt; the eggs, those delicate morsels, are ripped open and devoured. Will it be possible for me to witness this tragic end of the city, not in the fulness of its horror—that ambition is too far beyond my resources—but at least in some of its scenes? Let us try.
In October, I place under cover a few fragments of a nest which have been saved [[271]]from asphyxiation. By moderating the dose of petrol I can easily obtain a number of Wasps afflicted merely with a passing torpor, which enables me to collect them without being stung and which disappears as the sufferers are exposed to the air. Note also that, even with a fairly strong dose of petrol, capable of killing all the adults, the larvæ do not succumb. Mere digesting bellies, they hold out when the more delicately-organized adults perish. Safe from misadventure, I have been able in this way to establish in a cage a portion of a nest rich in eggs and larvæ, with some hundred neuters as attendants.
To facilitate my inspection, I separate the combs and place them side by side, with the openings of the cells turned upwards. This arrangement, which reverses the normal, does not appear to annoy my captives, who, soon recovering from their disturbance, set to work as if nothing unusual had occurred. In case they should wish to build, I give them a slip of soft wood to draw upon. Lastly, I feed them with honey, poured into a pool on a strip of paper and renewed daily. The underground cavern is represented by a large earthen pan surmounted by a wire-gauze cover. A cardboard dome, placed over the [[272]]cover or removed at will, provides alternately the obscurity demanded by the Wasps’ labours and the light needed for my observations.
The work is continued from one day to another. The Wasps attend at the same time to the larvæ and to the house. The builders begin to erect a wall round the most thickly-colonized combs. Do they intend to repair the disaster and build a new envelope, which will replace the vanished enclosing wall? The progress of the operation seems to tell us no. They are simply continuing the work which my terrible flask and my spade have interrupted. Over an area embracing hardly a third of the comb, they erect an arched roof of paper scales which would have been joined to the envelope of the nest had it been intact. They are not beginning again; they are continuing.
In any case, the sort of tent thus obtained shelters but a small part of the disk of cells. This is not for lack of materials. To begin with, there is the slip of wood, providing, in my opinion, an excellent supply of fibrous scraps. But the Wasps do not touch it. Perhaps I have chosen the wrong sort of piece, being but ill-versed in the secrets of Vespian paper-making. [[273]]
To these raw materials, which are troublesome to work, they prefer the old cells, now fallen into disuse. In these the felted fibres are ready prepared and have only to be reduced to pulp again. With a slight expenditure of saliva and a little grinding in the mandibles, it yields a product of the highest quality. The uninhabited cells, therefore, are demolished by degrees, nibbled and razed to their foundations. Out of the ruins a sort of canopy is built. New cells would be constructed in the same way if they were needed. This confirms what the upper stories with demolished cells made us foresee: the Wasps build new cells with old.
The feeding of the grubs deserves examination even more than this roofing-work. One would never weary of the spectacle of these rough fighters converted into tender nurses. The barracks are turned into a crèche. What care, what vigilance in the rearing of the grubs! Let us watch one of the busy Wasps. Her crop swollen with honey, she halts in front of a cell; almost pensively she bends her head into the orifice; she questions the recluse with the tip of her antenna. The larva wakes and gapes at her, like the fledgeling when the mother-bird returns to the nest with food. [[274]]
For a moment, the awakened larva swings its head to and fro: it is blind and is trying to feel the pap brought to it. The two mouths meet; a drop of syrup passes from the nurse’s mouth to the nurseling’s. That is enough for the moment. Now for the next. The Wasp moves on, to continue her duties elsewhere.