Devon Mertz, age 9, of Williamsport, Penna., or his question:
What i s a hornet's nest made of?
The hornet is the most waspy member of the wasp family. She is a beautiful insect and she leads an interesting life. But watch out. This black and yellow striped insect with the gauzy wings is always ready to sting you. And her sting is very painful indeed. She is very quick and very bad tempered,
Among her own relatives, however, the hornet is a model character. The one you see buzzing around the fruit and flowers is a worker hornet. She is a kindly aunt, devoted to the; care of the babies. Right not she is gathering sweet juices for the youngsters back in the nest.
This nest is about the size of a football. It may be hanging from a branch, in a hollow tree or hidden in the opening of a mouse hole. The place and shape of it depends upon the kind of hornet who made it„ One kind of hornet builds a nest like an upside down parasol hanging from a branch by a stalk.
Wherevcr it is, and whatever its shape, the hornet nest is always made of paper. We learned how to make paper hundreds of years ago in China. Hornets have: been making paper into nests for millions of years. Most of our paper is made from crushed and pulped wood. This is nothing new, either, the busy little hornet also makes her paper from wood.
The work begins in the spring when a lovely queen hornet comes out of hiding. She flies around seeking an old tree stump or worn fence post. She needs a supply of soft dry wood. She gets to work and chews up a mouthful of this wood in her jaws. Then she takes this pulpy paper to the right spot. She spits it out and molds it into the right shape. When it dries it will be a flake of paper.
Many flakes of paper are needed to build the whole nest. The queen stops 'abi s kind of work when she has room to lay her first brood of eggs. The eggs hatch into hungry grubs, then turn into sleeping pupae. These will hatch into full grown hornets. The queen is kept very busy with her first brood until they hatch.Then the busy workers are ready to help.
The rest of the nest is built by the worker hornets. The queen now gives all her time to laying more: and more eggs. Hornets do not store honey or other food in the nest as their cousins the bees do. They gather sweet fruit and flower juices and take this food straight to the mouths of the hungry grubs. These gentle nursemaids have no fear when out shopping for groceries. They will boldly raid a jelly sandwich while you are taking a bite.
When winter comes, all the nursemaid workers and all the male drones perish. A number of young queens have boon born and only they can survive the first frost. Each flies off to hide herself in a cozy tree trunk. There she waits for spring, then comes out and starts making a new paper nest of chewed up wood, just as her mother did.