Hobbies And Interests
Colonies
Social wasps live in colonies. A common paper wasp (Polistine) colony can have more than 200 wasps living in a nest no bigger than a man's hand. A yellow jacket nest can hold more than 5,000 insects. Those nests can be as large as a bushel basket---a little more than 1 cubic foot---and sometimes even bigger. Wasp or hornet nests are made of many rounded combs or cell structures stacked in tiers. This allows the nests to growth with the population.
Material
Wasps make their nests out of wood pulp, the same material used to make paper. The insects scrape wood from fences, trees, buildings, electric line poles and other sources. Their mandibles, or mouths, are specifically designed for this purpose. Sometimes, wasps even collect man-made paper products such as cardboard for their nests.
Building Process
After collecting the material, the female worker chews the wood pulp to mix it with her saliva. Wasp saliva helps make the fibers soft, damp and malleable. After the chewing period, she adds the paste to the nest structure. Then she spreads and flattens it out with her mandibles and legs. When the pulp dries, it turns into a strong, hard paper, similar to card stock.
Shape
Wasp species in the United States tend to build combs horizontally. Each comb has cells located on the bottom. Some species of Polistes wasps build their combs vertically, meaning the cells face toward one side. These cells protect the queen and her young during the complete metamorphosis period of egg, larva, pupa and adult stages. The cells generally do not contain food because most wasps do not store food.
Extra Protection
Some species, including hornets and yellow jackets, build a paper covering, or envelope, around the combs to provide extra insulation and temperature control. Paper wasps, however, build open nests that are less sheltered and do not include the paper envelope insulation. Paper wasps like quiet places and usually choose limbs, beams and supports as nest locations.
Mud Dauber Wasps
Unlike social wasps, mud daubers are solitary insects. They are very slender and have waists the size of a thread. In keeping with their name, these insects build nests made of mud. The nests are tube-shaped cells located side by side, usually in sheltered locations. Mud daubers also use their nests for protection when spending the winter as larvae.
Cicada Killer Wasps
Cicada killer wasps burrow into soil. The female digs a cell, then captures cicadas, stings them and places them inside the cell. She places one egg on each cicada before blocking off that cell and beginning a new one. Each generation spends its larval winter in the nest cell, located safely beneath soil.