Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets / Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904

by New York State College of Agriculture

The workers chew all the food which they give the little ones. When in summer you see hornets about your flower beds or feeding on other insects, it may be that they are preparing breakfast for the young. Notice the flowers which they visit.

Polistes, the Paper-maker.

In the previous lesson I spoke of vespa wasps that make homes of paper. You learned that they bite off pieces of weather-worn wood with their jaws and chew it until it is made into pulp. Were you interested in these social wasps? If so, you may like to hear about another member of the same family.

Fig. 355. Home of polistes, the paper-maker.

Hiding in some crevice about your house or the school building there is probably a wasp which naturalists call po-lis´-tes. She has been there ever since the cold weather came. In the spring you may see her tearing off pieces of wood from some unpainted building or weather-worn fence. Let us see what she is going to do.

This wasp is the founder of a colony. The first thing she does is to select a place for her home. Then she makes a few cells—only a few, for she has no help. When you find a nest like the one in the picture ([Fig. 355]), you will see how the comb is fastened to the roof or to a tree or to the under side of a stone.

As soon as the cells are completed, the mother lays an egg in each. From these eggs little grubs or larvæ are hatched. They are fed by the mother until they become pupæ. The cells are sealed over while the wasps are in the pupa state. They have to break open the seals before they can come out.

All members of the first brood are workers. As soon as they are hatched the mother has nothing to do but to provide eggs. They clean out the cells in which they passed their early days; they make additions to the nests; they take care of the young. Do you remember how the vespa workers prepared food for the larvæ in their colony and what they fed them? The young polistes are cared for in the same way.

You may see the workers flying about in your garden this summer, getting the sweets from the various flowers that you have planted. You will know why they are so busy through the long sunny days. You will think of the hungry little wasps waiting for their dinner. You will wonder whether they put their heads out of the cells when the workers feed them.