Welcome to You Ask Andy

Kenny Frank, age 16, of Pittsburgh, Pa., for his question:


HOW DO WASPS BUILD THEIR NESTS?

There are hundreds of different wasps, and they use a variety of materials to build their nests. Some gather mud and mold tiny tubes that look like organ pipes, while others use the same mud to mold tiny vase like nests. In some wasp families the basic building material is a homemade papery substance. And then there are wasps that do not bother to build nests at all.

Ready made holes in the ground suit them just fine.  Although most wasps are solitary insects that live and work alone, there are some species that live together in a colony. These are the papermakers of the insect world and include the hornets and the yellow jackets. Their nests are constructed of old wood and tough plant fibers. Using an ample amount of saliva, the materials are chewed up into a feltlike mass and molded into cells.

Some of the papermakers build a single flat comb under the eaves of a sheltering roof, or attach it to a tree limb. Other nests are shaped like a football and hung on a bough. They wrap it with layer upon layer of their homemade paper until the entire nest is covered with a waterproof shell. Unlike a bee colony, the social wasps' colony lasts only one year. The job of producing a new colony falls to a crop of young queens that spend the winter sleeping in a safe spot.

Hundreds of wasps prefer to live alone. These are the solitary wasps, and they include such craftsmen as masons, carpenters and excavators. By herself, each female has to choose the right place, locate the right materials to build her nest and then provide food for the larvae. A mason wasp uses her saliva to mix a moist mortar of mud and stones. She may plaster it on a stone in an open field, and after drying it becomes hard and sturdy.

A miner wasp digs tunnels into the ground to rear her offspring, while a carpenter wasp digs a neat row of cells in a tree trunk. The mud daubers use their saliva and mud to plaster their nests on the underside of a roof overhang or some other protected spot. Dozens of trips are required to construct the tubelike apartments that house her eggs. Potter wasps make dainty nests that look like urns.

Different kinds of wasps build different kinds of nests, but all wasps pass through the same four stages of life. The egg hatches into a grub that nourishes itself on food provided by the parent  generally insects or spiders. Later, the grub enters a "resting" period, or pupal stage, and finally emerges from the pupal case as an adult.

 

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