Paul Winnerling, age 11, of Lancaster, Pa., for his question:

ARE THERE EGGS IN A HORNET NEST?

Paul and his friends found a hornet nest in a back yard. They wonder whether it is safe to bring it into the classroom. After all, hornets are hot tempered fellows, armed with stings. Perhaps the eggs, if any, might hatch in a warm room and become a hazard. Actually, the last eggs should have hatched in the fall. In any case, the young are helpless larvas that depend on adult worker hornets to serve them special food.

The insects we call hornets are large social wasps. They may be white faced hornets or yellowjackets. In each case the social colony is ruled by the queen mother, who is about one inch long. She lays all the eggs, most of which become workers that take over the family chores of nest building and bringing up the babies. Toward the end of the summer season, the queen hornet lays a few eggs that hatch into male drones and young queens.

Then she stops laying altogether and her workers all die before the cold weather sets in. Come winter, the old family nest is completely deserted. Meantime, the young couples have mated. The males perish but each female nestles down in a cozy hideaway where she survives the winter.

With the first breath of spring, she flies forth to establish a new hornet colony of her own. Her family, long ages ago, invented paper making and she uses this talent to start the nest. She chews, moistens and pulverizes bits of wood and molds the papery material into a few egg cells. She may attach the new home to a bough. It will be a small platform of cells, with the openings pointed downward.

The queen hornet tends her first small brood through the larva stages. When they hatch into adult workers she expects them to take over the nest building and baby sitting chores ¬ while she gives all her time to egg laying. Soon the busy workers add a new layer of cells under the original layer, with just enough space    to crawl between. By midsummer the hornet nest looks like a big brown football  all made of wood processed into brown papery  material.

When winter comes, the fascinating hornet nest is deserted. However, other large solitary wasps often leave eggs to spend the winter in their cells. These types include the mason wasps and mud daubers. The lone female builds a few sturdy cells of mud. Through the summer she brings up several small batches of young hornets all by herself. Come fall, a few pupas may be left in their cells. They are expected to sleep until spring. But they may hatch in a warm room or even during a warm spell in the middle of winter.