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Jodi Klein, age 11, of Winnipeg, Man., Canada, for her question:

COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT WASPS?

The world is literally teeming with insects, and it is estimated that there are more than 800,000 different kinds. As an aid in classification these kinds are broken down into large groups called orders. One of these orders is the Hymenoptera ¬the group that includes bees, ants and wasps.

There are many different kinds of wasps found throughout the world. While they differ greatly in size and habits, they do share some common characteristics. Perhaps their most outstanding feature is their stylish wasp waist. This is the slender portion of the wasp's body that connects his abdomen to this thorax. Their bodies are generally slender and, while some are shiny black or steely blue, many are brightly decorated with bands of red, yellow or orange.

Some wasps live in colonies, and they are called social wasps. These are the papermakers of the insect world and include the hornets and yellow jackets. They build their nests from a mixture of old wood and tough plant fibers which they chew into a pulp. The colonies of the social wasps last only one season. Most wasps do not store food and in the fall the members of the nests die, except for a crop of new young queens who have mated and will hibernate through the winter. In the following spring they will form new colonies of their own.

The solitary wasps do not live together in groups. And where the social wasps are the papermakers, the solitary wasps are the masons, diggers and pottery makers. One pottery maker many of us have seen is the steely blue mud dauber. She models a nest of soft mud that is left to dry in the sun. Each compartment of her nest encloses one egg plus a supply of food for the hungry larva that hatches from the egg.

Other solitary wasps dig holes in the ground or, as in the case of the carpenter wasps, tunnel into the wood of old trees or posts. All the solitary wasps have one thing in common  they provide food for the offspring they seldom see. Wasps catch caterpillars, spiders, beetles and many other types of insects. Since the larval wasps most often subsist on live food, the mother wasp must take great care merely to paralyze  the prey and not kill it.

If we were to judge the wasps only on the basis of their painful stings, we might be forced to admit that they are bad tempered pests. However, to be fair, we must examine the evidence of their general usefulness. For even while most wasps live on nectar, they destroy large numbers of harmful insects to provide food for their young.

 

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