Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 222, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1917 — Social Wasp. [ARTICLE]

Social Wasp.

We are often urged to study the ant or the bee to learn the value of Industry and efficiency, but these are not the only Insects who know how to work in organizations. The social or paper-nest building wasps live in colonies and have a large number of workers, a few males and a number of queens for each colony. They build their nests of the paper which they manufacture out of wood pulp, gathering it from dead branches, twigs and old fence wood, with Jaws that are provided with pincers. It is waterproof paper, too. The queens live long and are hard workers. They hide through the winter in sheltered places, but never in their own nests, and they come forth in the spring to help build new nests and lay more eggs, one In each six-sided cell of the paper comb. These paper makers go ahead of bees and ants In some of their methods, for, naturalists say, they do things with less fluster and more precision.