while Polistes is smaller and more timid and its colonies never reach such formidable dimensions as those of Vespa.
Here, as in the other genera, the colony consists of three kinds of individuals—males, females and workers or neuters, and is founded usually[1] by a single female somewhat improperly called the queen. She, with perhaps several other females, is the sole survivor of a colony of the previous season, and has passed the winter in some warm crevice or sheltered corner. During the first warm days of spring, she may be seen seeking a suitable nesting-place and, this found, she begins the construction of the nest, which has the appearance represented in the accompanying figure. Each cell contains an egg suspended near its apex by the aboral end, and in the course of a few days this egg develops into a worm-like feeding larva. The queen works incessantly when the weather permits, increasing the number of cells, lengthening the cells already there and strengthening the stalk which supports the whole, so that when, at the end of six weeks—the first workers emerge, the nest may comprise as many as forty or fifty cells. From this time the workers gradually assume all the duties of the colony except the egg laying,[2] though, as far as I have observed, in a spirit[3] far different from that of the queen. Thus, one nest, which at the beginning of July was made up of forty-three cells, and represented the work of a single queen or mother, contained at the end of the season only one hundred and twenty-seven cells, the eighty-four additional cells being presumably the product of at least fifty workers which had emerged during the summer months. Toward the latter part of August and early September the males and females appear, and the nests are more and more deserted for the flowers and fruits of autumn. Here the males and females mate, the workers and males linger through the warmer days, while the fertilized females alone survive the winter and lay the foundation of the new colony in the spring.
The Site of the Nest.
This varies for different localities and to a certain extent in different species. In Wisconsin, where most of these studies were made, the
- ↑ The queens usually work singly, but in three cases two wasps were observed associating in the construction of the same nest. These may have represented a queen and a worker that had accidentally survived the winter. It is difficult to see how a partnership of queens could be formed, since the owner of a nest strongly resents the intrusion of another wasp, expelling her from the scene with the utmost ferocity.
- ↑ The careful researches of Siebold and Marchal show that even this function is assumed by the workers in case of the death of the queen.
- ↑ In writing a paper of this nature it is somewhat difficult to avoid misleading 'anthropomorphisms,' and it may be well to state once for all that the occasional use of expressions similar to the above is purely figurative and for the purpose of avoiding awkward circumlocutions.
