Wasps: Social And Solitary (1905)

OCIAL

SOLITARY

EUZABETH G.

PBCKH AM

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WASPS SOCIAL

AND SOLITARY

Page 266

PELOP/EUS ON NEST, GROUP OF FINISHED CELLS, AND TUBE OPENED TO SHOW SPIDERS

WASPS SOCIAL AND SOLITARY BY

GEORGE

W. PECKHAM AND

ELIZABETH

G.

PECKHAM

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

JOHN BURROUGHS ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES

H.

" Bold sons of air and heat, untamed, untired."

EMERTON ILIAD,

Book XVII

'

>

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (Cbe 0itoer?ibc p>res$, Cambribge

1905

COPYRIGHT

1905

BY GEORGE W. PECKHAM AND ELIZABETH

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published Afril, 7905

G.

PECKHAM

NOTE A

PART

of the matter presented in this

volume was

published several years ago by the Wisconsin Biological Survey, under the Solitary

Wasps."

'

title

Instincts

and Habits of the

These chapters have been revised

and modified, and new matter based upon

later

work

has been added, in the hope that in their present technical form the observations recorded

will

be of

less in-

terest to the general reader.

For a number

of the text cuts used in this

volume we

are indebted to the courtesy of Dr. E. A. Birge, Director of the

Survey.

Wisconsin Geological and Natural History

CONTENTS PAGE

CHAPTER I.

II.

COMMUNAL LIFE

i

AMMOPHILA AND HER CATERPILLARS

III.

THE GREAT GOLDEN DIGGER

IV.

SEVERAL LITTLE WASPS

V.

VI. VII. VIII. IX.

X. XI. XII.

XIII.

CRABRO

AN

.

...

....... ......

ISLAND SETTLEMENT

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

THE BURROWERS

THE WOOD-BORERS THE SPIDER-HUNTERS THE ENEMIES OF THE GRASSHOPPER WORKERS IN CLAY .

.

72

97

119 141

196

248

.

.

265

275

.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

56

178 .

.

SENSE OF DIRECTION

15

.

.

.

292

31254

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE

GROUP OF FINISHED CELLS, AND TUBE OPENED TO SHOW SPIDERS (page 266) Frontispiece WASP EATING 3 PAPER NEST WITH SIDE REMOVED TO SHOW CONPELOP^EUS ON NEST,

........

STRUCTION OF COMBS

.

.

.

.

ii

.

........

AMMOPHILA URNARIA CARRYING CATERPILLAR TO NEST

19

AMMOPHILA URNARIA STINGING CATERPILLAR CATERPILLAR WITH EGG OF AMMOPHILA URNARIA NEST OF AMMOPHILA AMMOPHILA URNARIA USING STONE TO POUND DOWN EARTH OVER NEST

39

THOROUGH LOCALITY STUDY BY SPHEX

59

.

..... .

.

HASTY LOCALITY STUDY BY SPHEX SPHEX DRAGGING GRASSHOPPER TO HER NEST NEST OF SPHEX .

27

29 31

.61

.

.

..... ...... ...... ....

63

69

OXYBELUS QUADRINOTATUS NEST OF OXYBELUS

75

APORUS FASCIATUS

81

WASP HOMES

IN THE LOG CABIN NEST OF PERENNIS NEST OF ANORMIS .

.

.

79

85

89 .

.

.

91

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE

SEXMACULATUS IN THE LINDEN ROOTS CRABRO AND HER WHITE MOTHS

.

.

.103

.

.

CRABRO STIRPICOLA BOTTLE ON STEM TO MEASURE WORK OF CRABRO NEST OF C. STIRPICOLA .

.

AMMOPHILA

SLEEPING

.

.

.

THE

IN

99

.

GRASS

106

.

.

113

(AFTER

BANKS) NEST OF BEMBEX

115 125

BEMBEX SPINOL^E LOOKING OUT OF NEST BEMBEX

A CORNER

OF THE BEMBEX COLONY

-131

.

136

....

NEST OF CERCERIS NIGRESCENS

.

.

.

CERCERIS DESERTA

:

143

LOCALITY STUDY BEFORE LEAV-

ING NEST

153

PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUS

.

.

NEST OF PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUS APHILANTHOPS GATHERING ANTS

TRYPOXYLON RUBROCINCTUM

.

.

.

.

163

185

.

.191

.

...

DIG-

197

.

.

POMPILUS QUINQUENOTATUS EPEIRA STRIX PARALYZED AND HUNG UP ON BEAN

PLANT BY POMPILUS QUINQUENOTATUS, OUT OF THE WAY OF ANTS

.....

P.

QUINQUENOTATUS POMPILUS MARGINATUS

.

.

.

157

.169

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

MALE TRYPOXYLON AWAITING THE FEMALE TORNADO WASP (POMPILUS QUINQUENOTATUS)

NEST OF

137

142

CERCERIS CLYPEATA

GING NEST

107

199

203

.213 223

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE HOME-COMING

.... ....

OF SCELESTUS

NEST OF AGENIA BOMBYCINA LYCOSA KOCHII, FOUND IN NEST OF AGENIA BOMBYCINA

241

245

245

TACHYTES

NEST OF TACHYTES.

PAGE

249 .

.

.

CHLORION AND THE INDISCREET CRICKET HORIZONTAL CELLS OF THE MUD-DAUBER

-251

.

.

257

.

.

.271

.

COURSE FOLLOWED BY POMPILUS FUSCIPENNIS IN FINDING HER SPIDER, AND IN RETRACING HER STEPS TO THE NEST

283

LOCALITY STUDY OF ASTATA BICOLOR

288

LOCALITY STUDY OF ASTATA UNICOLOR

.

.

.

.

.

SECOND LOCALITY STUDY OF ASTATA UNICOLOR

290

PARALYZED SPIDER HUNG UP ON SORREL BY QUINQUENOTATUS WHILE SHE DIGS HER NEST .

>-'

289

295

"o IbU

Introduction

NOT

long since I wrote to a friend, a nature lover,

as follows:

"The most charming monograph

in

any department of our natural history that I have read

many a year is on our solitary wasps, by George W. Peckham and his wife, of Wisconsin, - a work so in

-

delightful

and

that

instructive

it

is

a great pity

it

is

not published in some popular series of nature books,

where

it

could reach

its

fit

audience, instead of being

handicapped as a State publication." This end has now been brought about, and the book with

much new

gives

many new

material and

placed within easy reach of

all

interest of a

and enlarged

illustrations -

nature lovers, to

me pleasure to commend it.

of patient, exact,

revised

It is

whom

it

a wonderful record

and loving observation, which has all the

romance.

right at our feet,

It

opens up a world of Lilliput

wherein the

delight us with their curious

little

human

people amuse and foibles

and whim-

sicalities, and surprise us with their intelligence and individuality. Here I had been saying in print that I

looked upon insects as perfect automata, and

same

all

of the

class as nearly alike as the leaves of the trees or

xm

INTRODUCTION upon the beach. I had not reckoned with the Peckhams and their solitary wasps. The solitary ways the sands

of these insects

seem

and they

one from another, more than any other

differ

to bring out their individual traits,

known

wild creatures

to

me.

man is the only tool-using

has been thought that

It

animal, yet here

wasps, Ammophila, that uses a

down

hand, and uses

would take a stone

hammer

as a

it

I

to

this

;

so far as I

know

there

This

I

act

am

reading

is

its

soil

a remark-

no other animal on

makes any mechanical use

continent that

object or substance foreign to

The

is

in

our

in

pound down the

above the cavity that holds her egg. able fact

pebble to pound

She takes the pebble

the earth over her nest.

her mandibles, as you or

little

one of these

is

own body

of

in this

an

way.

stamps Ammophila as a tool-using animal. have had more delight in

free to confess that I this

book than

in a long time.

in reading

Such a queer

little

any other nature book people as

it

reveals to

us, so whimsical, so fickle, so fussy, so forgetful, so wise

and yet so

foolish,

such victims of routine and yet so

and yet such

individual, with such apparent foresight

thoughtlessness,

finding their

way back

to the

same

square inch of earth in the monotonous expanse of a

wide plowed

field

with unfailing accuracy, and then at

times finishing their

cell

and sealing xiv

it

up without the

INTRODUCTION and the egg

spider

and

;

hardly any two alike

excitable, another

calm and unhurried

suspicious, that one confiding

burrow before

it

captures

game and then digging up

spider

it

works

moment

its

little

of

this

;

one its

game, others capturing the

weed

one wasp hanging

;

to

at its nest,

or two to see that

keep

it

it is

safe it

its

away from the

and then running

ing the insect on the ground while

and

one care-

;

one species digging

;

the hole

in the fork of a

ants while

queer

one nervous

her work, another neat and thorough

less in

every

;

;

to

it

another lay-

digs,

-

verily a

people, with a lot of wild nature about them,

human

nature, too.

JOHN BURROUGHS.

WASPS and Solitary

Social

I

Chapter

COMMUNAL "

"

What

A)

LIFE

For where 's the state beneath the firmament That doth excel the wasps' for government." is

not good for the swarm

is

not good for the wasp."

mankind

the tendency of

to

crowd

grows stronger the joys of country

into life

towns

and the

workings of Nature are more and more excluded from the daily experience of humanity. love of the wild

is

too strong for suppression,

from the hot and noisy of spirit to

meet our

streets they find

little

wider spaces of their

We

In a few the primal

it

and turning

a refreshment

brothers of earth and air in the

own

territory.

were walking through the woods one hot day in

the middle of August

when our

attention

was attracted

by a stream of yellow-jackets issuing from the ground. They came in such surprising numbers and looked so i

WASPS, SOCIAL of energy that

full

AND SOLITARY

we stopped

was our introduction

to

watch them, and

to the study of these

this

"bold sons of

and heat," although a perusal of Fabre's fascinating " "Souvenirs Entomologiques had prepared us to feel a

air

We -were

them.

lively interest in

near Milwaukee, where

wooded

at

our

meadow and

summer home

garden, with the

island in the lake close by, offered themselves as

hunting grounds, while wasps of every kind, the istic tribes

as well as the extreme individualists of the

solitary species,

The Vespas first

social-

were waiting

that

be studied.

had aroused our

attention, and a nest

in the

convenient arrangement.

been dangerous to

to

life

interest received

ground proved

our

to be a most

Experiments that would have

and limb had we

tried

them with

a paper nest hanging in the open, were easy here so long

we kept calm and

unflurried. Intent upon their own and affairs, unsuspicious of evil, perhaps because they knew themselves to be armed against aggression, they

as

accepted our presence, at

we

first

with indifference

;

but as

after day we must have become landand them, perhaps before the summer was over they considered us really a part of home. While poor humanity takes comfort in a mid-day sat there

day

marks

to

siesta,

wasps love the heat of noontide, and with every

rise

in temperature they fly faster, 2

hum

louder,

and

COMMUNAL rejoice

more and more

trance to the

LIFE

in the fullness of

life.

The

en-

Vespa nest was but an inch across; and once in and out in a hurrying throng,

when they were going jostling

each other in their eagerness, we counted the

number

that passed, one taking the entrances

and one

WASP EATING

In ten minutes

the exits. left

the nest

five

hundred and ninety-two

and two hundred and forty-seven went

in,

we saw eight hundred and thirty-nine or about eighty to the minute. This must be a strong swarm, wonderful indeed when we thought that it had all come

so that

from a single queen mother.

made an

We imagined how she

had

early start, digging a hole in the ground, build-

ing within

it

a paper

comb with 3

five or six cells

around a

WASPS, SOCIAL

and laying therein some neuter eggs; month in attending carefully

central column,

how

AND SOLITARY

she had then spent a

to the beginnings of things, feeding the

young larvae as they hatched, and watching over them through their childhood and youth; and then how her solicitude was rewarded by the

filial

devotion with which this

first set

of

workers took upon themselves the labor of excavating,

and feeding the young, everything indeed except the egg-laying. These queens, surrounded though they

building,

are by respectful

worst of

it

in

and

attentive subjects,

have much the

our estimation, never going out, and passing

Through the early summer only neuters are produced, but when fall approaches the their lives in a dull routine.

future generation

is

males and females.

provided for by the development of

The

activity of the little colony

by the season, for as the days

limited

males and females leave the nest and mate, and a

little

both males and workers lose ambition, become

later

inactive

and

finally die, while the

protected corners to reappear

and

is

grow colder the

larvae, left

moulds and comes

to

queens hide away in

in the spring.

unfed and uncared

to hordes of insects,

The

eggs

for, become a prey to and thus the swarm

an end.

We had once made some not very successful attempts to find out

whether spiders had a sense of color; and seeing 4

COMMUNAL

much more

that the conditions were

present subjects, test

their

sheets of

LIFE

we thought

favorable with our

would be a good plan

it

knowledge of the spectrum.

stiff

paper two

ting a circular hole four in the centre of each,

Providing six

feet square, colored respectively

and two shades

red, blue, green, pink,

to

and one

of yellow,

and

cut-

half inches in diameter

we began our experiments by

pla-

cing the red paper over the nest so that the entrance was

The outgoing wasps dashed upward

clearly exposed.

without noticing

it,

but great was the confusion

Thrown

the homecomers.

among

out of their reckoning, they

clamored about us in ever increasing swarms.

Like

Homer's wasps, " All rise in

arms and with a general cry

Assert their domes and buzzing progeny,"

was approaching, when one, a pioneer of thought, determined to go into the hole, which did not look like the right hole, although it was where the right and a

crisis (for us)

hole ought to be;

and

so potent

one the others followed.

become accustomed

to

is

example that one by

Three hours

later they

the change, and went

in

had

and out

as usual.

They had

noticed the paper

;

that

was plain enough,

but did they notice the redness?

To

things as they were for two days,

and then substituted

5

test this,

we

left

AND SOLITARY

WASPS, SOCIAL

blue paper for the red. Again the confusion, the swarming of fervent legions,

the noisy expostulations,

the

descent of one after another; but this time they settled

down

to their ordinary routine in a little

On

hours.

the following day

we removed

more than two the blue paper,

leaving the grass around the nest exposed

;

and

this

proved a new source of mystification, but not so serious as the others.

were

still

At the end of an hour twenty-five or

thirty

buzzing about, needing the guidance of the

blue paper to get inside, and entering at once

was replaced. As we

new

from day

when

it

to

day a

few of the wasps became entirely reconciled to our

inter-

tried

colors

and paid no attention to the changes, while the others grew more or less accustomed to the idea of mutaference,

bility,

and were but

showed

little

disturbed, although they

their consciousness of

a few circles before going

in.

still

each alteration by making

We once placed some dark

red nasturtiums on light yellow paper near the nest, and

found that more than one third of the homecoming

wasps flew ing.

to

them and hovered over them before

When light yellow nasturtiums,

paper in

color,

six noticed

nearly matching the

were substituted, only one out of

them; and as the odor was as strong

case as the other,

it

enter-

thirty-

in

one

would seem that the color was the

attracting force.

6

COMMUNAL Our

final color

LIFE

experiment was to

remain for a day or two, giving time for

become

familiar with

and then

it,

the blue paper

let

all

the wasps to

to leave

it

ground a foot and a half away, while replacing This gave a

yellow.

that they

false nest

on the it

with

surrounded by the color

had been associating with the entrance, and a by a new

true nest surrounded

color.

In the next ten

minutes two hundred and seventy wasps came home, and every one of them went to the false nest.

above

it,

began

to excavate,

Many

others entered the hole in the paper,

and made quite a depression

ground; but gradually they found

Three hours

later seventy-six

their

circled

and some in the

way home.

wasps entered the

false

and at evening they were still visiting numbers but on the next day we saw only

nest in five minutes, it

in goodly

;

two that were deceived.

On

successive days

we

substituted red for yellow,

green for red, and so on, always with similar results,

although the wasps became more and more accustomed to the vicissitudes of their

look for the hole

itself

life,

and

after a time

seemed

without relying upon the color to

guide them. They found their nest under a color new

them much more

to

readily than

away and the ground green paper was around

when

the paper

entirely

left

the

their nest,

7

exposed.

to

was taken

Once when

and the wind

AND SOLITARY

WASPS, SOCIAL blew

it

over the hole so that they could not enter, at least

one hundred collected, nest; free,

when we

many

lifted the

of

them

settling in the false

green paper, leaving the hole

only three or four entered, but

when we put

in place they rushed in six or seven at a time.

it

back

It

was

plainly the color that directed them.

This was a nearly rainless summer,

a condition

extremely favorable to wasp development. plied

and grew

until the

and no wonder,

whole country-side complained,

for houses

were

full of

them, and at meal-

times they gathered at the table with the

How

family. It

did they

Nests multi-

members of

the

know when dinner was ready

?

could not have been by the sight, unfamiliar to them,

of cooked food

smell

;

was

then, through the

it,

sense of

?

Many

were the questions that we asked

in vain of

our Vespas, but here was one that they could readily

be made to answer.

We

rolled

up two bundles, one

nothing but gauze, and another, like

but containing some laid

to

warm

one side of the

it

in appearance,

chicken bones

nest,

of

;

these were

the color of the gauze

was placed.

matching that of the paper on which

it

The wasps

though loaded

in returning to the nest, even

with food, could not settled thickly

upon

resist the

appetizing odor, and

the bone bundle, trying their best

8

COMMUNAL to penetrate within,

noticed.

As

LIFE

while the empty gauze was un-

the bones grew cold

less attention,

and dry they attracted

but two days later they were occasion-

ally visited.

killed

Having

two wasps that had alighted on the

ground, by striking them with a folded paper,

we took

them up and placed one of them at a distance, so that it was entirely hidden in the grass. Five settled above and

it,

visited

had

after they

it

away

several others, while the spot

by

killed

minutes.

had carried

them drew

to

it

nine wasps within fifteen

;

of scent

where

but the powerful

oils of

peppermint and wintergreen, although little

was

upon which we

Thus they seemed very keen

animal matter was concerned

the place

noticed, aroused

attention, perhaps because they indicated nothing

of interest to them.

Our experiments on

hearing met with negative

results.

The wasps seemed insensible to any noise we could make or that we could produce by whistles of various degrees of shrillness.

This of course does not show that

they cannot hear, and any one

enough will

to disturb

them

remember how

in the

their

who has been

unfortunate

neighborhood of

their nest

angry buzzing seemed to serve

as a battle cry to gather all the

members

of the clan for

the attack.

9

/ '