Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed According to Their Principle of Construction

At this time Mr. Stone fitted up another box with two rows of wire pillars, eight in number, placed with tolerable regularity about two inches apart, and having a piece of comb at the base and summit of each. In this box the wasps remained for fifteen days, and in that time had covered all the wires and most of the combs, and had nearly filled the box with paper.

In order that a more symmetrical structure might be produced, a fifth box was fitted up with wires arranged in a different manner. Four wires were placed across the box, rather in advance of the middle, and two others in front of them. To all these wires a piece of comb was fixed at the base and summit, but between the two central pillars a short wire was placed, having a piece of comb at its summit only. The wasps were transferred to this box, and in the short space of five days they covered all the combs and wires, and produced the extraordinary structure which is shown in Fig. 1, and which looks like a paper imitation of a stalactitic cavern. The insects were ejected from this nest before they had finished their work, and, in consequence, a portion of the comb on the small central pillar is still left uncovered.

As this box had been so successful, another was prepared on the same principle, and the wasps were permitted to reside in it for the same number of days, in which time they produced an equally beautiful but rather more massive nest. This specimen is shown at Fig. 2 of the illustration. In hopes that the wasps might make a still more splendid nest, a much larger box was fitted up, and the insects transferred to it. As by this time the autumn was closing in, and the weather became cold, the wasps could do but little work, and in a short time they died.

Thus, in the wonderfully short space of thirty-eight days, six elaborate and beautiful nests had been made by a single brood of wasps, and it is probable that if the original nest had been taken at an earlier period of the year, they would have made a still larger number. However, such a feat as they did perform ought to make us look upon the wasp with a more indulgent eye; and, although it can not supply us with honey, as does the bee, it can certainly rival that useful insect in industry.

On looking at this beautiful series of nests, the observer can not but admire the manner in which the instinct of these creatures is made subservient to human reason. This instinct teaches them to cover all their combs with a thick mass of paper, the reason being, although they may not know it, that a certain uniformity of temperature is needed for the well-being of the eggs and young. If, therefore, combs are placed conveniently for the insects, they will assuredly cover them according to their instincts, and will as surely take advantage of wires or any other supports to which they can attach the fragile substance of which the nest is made.

Mr. Stone has made other experiments upon wasps, and has kindly sent me the following account of his proceedings:

“I have a beautiful series of their nests of this season’s production (1864), from specimens which are the work of two or three hours, to those which have occupied as many months.

“But my working communities in a semi-domesticated state within the house have for the last few weeks been going the wrong way. Earlier in the season I had as many as ten colonies of various species at work in the different windows of the house which I have for some years used for the purpose, all of which went on satisfactorily for some time, but the sugar with which they were fed at length attracted a vast number of strangers, which crowded into the various boxes, and at first impeded, and ultimately put an end to the work. Before this event happened, one extraordinary nest had become advanced as far as I wished; and a second, which was still more extraordinary, almost as far as I desired. The facts connected with these nests are as follows:

“I had a working community of Vespa germanica in the left-hand corner of a window on the ground floor, and another in the right-hand corner. When these nests had increased in size to four or five inches in diameter, I chloroformed the insects, removed the shell or covering of each nest from the combs, putting aside the coverings for specimens. In order to remove the combs, I had to cut out a piece from the outside, and when this was neatly united again, the empty shells had all the appearance of perfect nests, with this advantage, that they contained nothing which required drying in an oven in order to prevent decomposition, which must have been done had the combs, with their complement of grubs, etc., been allowed to remain in the nests. This plan I always adopt when it is practicable. I then returned the combs to the boxes from which they were respectively taken, and introduced the workers, still in a comatose state from the effects of the chloroform. As soon as they recovered from their stupor, they set to work at constructing fresh coverings.

“I now brought home a nest of Vespa vulgaris, with its inmates. This was placed for work in a box in the left-hand corner of a room immediately over the one just mentioned. Soon after this, I perceived that the newly-formed covering to the nest of the V. germanica in the left-hand corner of the window below was beginning to assume a variety of curious coloring. On clipping away the covering when it became sufficiently advanced for another specimen, I found that numbers of workers from the nest of V. vulgaris, situated in the window above, had actually joined themselves to this nest, and had been working with its original inmates.

“Not only had they been working in concert with them, but they had been depositing eggs in the cells, as is proved by the fact that numbers of young specimens of V. vulgaris were afterward bred from the combs contained in the nest of V. germanica. I do not know whether you are aware that worker wasps have the power of producing fertile eggs without contact with the other sex, yet such I have proved over and over again to be the case.

“Well, having again, as above stated, removed the covering from this nest, I took away the lower comb and reduced the nest somewhat in size, placing them in a box thirteen inches in length, and arranged in such a way that the workers should necessarily produce a vase, or rather a goblet-shaped nest. This they did, and a splendid object it is, being, as before, the joint work of two species of wasps, the one, V. vulgaris, using, as it invariably does, decayed wood (such as is commonly called touchwood), and the other, V. germanica, using sound wood, or sound vegetable fibre of some kind, in the fabrication of its paper. Thus they gave to the coverings of both these nests an extraordinary beauty, from the variety and charming distribution of the colors with which they were enriched.

“As none of the workers from the nest of V. vulgaris were ever found to attach themselves to the nest of V. germanica, which was situated in a similar corner of the window below, I conclude that they made no mistake as to the corner of the window in which their nest was situated, but miscalculated the height of the window. As they entered the strange nest with food and building material, they were not molested, but allowed to join peaceably in the work of the nest.

“Widely different would have been the case had they entered it for the purpose of pillage; for, though wasps will not interfere with strange individuals of the same species, even when they come with thievish intentions, they instantly seize all individuals of a different species if their intentions appear suspicious.

“I have since met with another instance of the kind.

“Two nests were situated almost close together, in a drain at Colethorpe Park, one belonging to V. vulgaris, and the other having been originally the property of V. germanica. It would, however, appear that, at an early period in the season, workers from the former nest had attached themselves to the latter, their numbers increasing as the season advanced. Judging from the appearance of the nest, and from the species, it was easy to see that, at the end of August, when I dug amount of work done by each, the number of individuals of each species was almost equal. There is no possibility of mistaking the work of one species for that of the other, and the distinction is apparent at a glance.

“Apart from the interest attached to nests of this description, no examples of which had been, as far as I am aware, obtained by any naturalist, their beauty of coloring is so remarkable as to render them objects of general admiration. If, too, as I apprehend must have been the case, the workers belonging to the colony of V. vulgaris mistook their neighbors' house for their own, the entrances being so near together, it is rather extraordinary that those belonging to the other species should not have made a similar mistake. They appeared, however, not to have done so, or if they did, the mistake must have been rectified as often as it occurred, for no work of theirs was to be found in the nest of V. vulgaris.”

Before closing the history of the wasps, I may mention that the two species, Vespa germanica and Vespa vulgaris, are so similar to each other in shape and color that an unpracticed eye can not readily discern the distinction between them. Specimens of both these wasps are now before me, and when placed side by side the difference is clearly evident. The yellow color predominates in the former insect, and the dark bands of the abdomen are much narrower. In the female Vespa germanica there are three black spots on the basal margin of the first segment of the abdomen.

In Mr. Bates's valuable work on the natural history of the Amazons, there is an interesting account of the proceedings of certain ants belonging to the genus Eciton, and which are popularly massed together under the name of Foraging Ants. These insects have often been confounded with the Saüba or parasol ant, which has already been described, although they belong to different groups and have different habits. The native name for them is Tauóca. There are many species belonging to this genus, and I shall therefore restrict myself to those which seem to have the most interesting habits, giving at the same time a general sketch of their character. I regret that, as in so many other cases, the lack of popular names forces me to employ the scientific titles by which the insects are known to naturalists.

Although in the Ecitons there are the three classes of males, females, and neuters, these neuters are not divided into two distinct sets as in the termites, but are found in regular gradations of size. The real Foraging Ant is Eciton drepanophora, and it is this insect which is so annoying and so useful to house-builders. The ants sally forth in vast columns, at least a hundred yards in length, though not of very great width. On the outside of the column are the officers, which are continually running backward and forward, as if to see that their own portions of the column are proceeding rightly. The proportion of officers to workers is about five per cent., or one officer to twenty workers, and they are extremely conspicuous on the march, their great white heads nodding up and down as they run along.