The
leaders are far larger and milder-tempered than the others. The
workers do not live over into a second year, but all die when winter
comes on; and this can be proved, for at the commencement of winter
the workers become drowsy, and about the time of the winter solstice
they are never seen at all. The leaders, the so-called mothers, are
seen all through the winter, and live in holes underground; for men
when ploughing or digging in winter have often come upon mother-wasps,
but never upon workers. The mode of reproduction of wasps is as
follows. At the approach of summer, when the leaders have found a
sheltered spot, they take to moulding their combs, and construct the
so-called sphecons,-little nests containing four cells or thereabouts,
and in these are produced working-wasps but not mothers. When these
are grown up, then they construct other larger combs upon the first,
and then again in like manner others; so that by the close of autumn
there are numerous large combs in which the leader, the so-called
mother, engenders no longer working-wasps but mothers. These develop
high up in the nest as large grubs, in cells that occur in groups of
four or rather more, pretty much in the same way as we have seen the
grubs of the king-bees to be produced in their cells.
Pages:
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563