Evening star., 1944-10-30
This and That
By Charles E. TracepeH.
ARLINGTON, Va.

Dear Sir.
II was considerably puzzled by some
thing I noticed today in my garden, in
which have lived for so long that there
should be nothing new in it, and will
be greatly interested and greatly ap-
preciative If you will explain it.
THE north edge of the garden ends
in a drainage furrow about 18 inches
deep. with somewhat of bank on the
uphill side and in this bank I found
during the summer hole about IA
inches in diameter, giving ingress and
egress to busy traffic Of what I took
to be yellow jackets-inSects resembling
honey bees but smaller, and yellow with
black girth-wise bands the size of thread
They congregated on any outdoor
dishes containing water and when in the
air had the hummingbird's ability to
remain practically stationary They
aighted mostly on the grass and regu-
larry on my cat.
To-day I found their portal enlarged
to about 81 inches. Earth had been
dragged outside and piled and the hole
deepened to about inches, just as
would be done by digging animal, and
in the loose dirt were several pieces of
comb about half an inch thick or deep,
with the cells empty and no insects
about.
Il assumed the nest had been aban-
doned, perhaps the insects drowned by
the recent heavy rains, as hardly any
animal would risk digging into a nest
of live insects; that the scent of the
honey or whatever they secreted in the
comb attracted an animal which dug it
out to eat it, but the $64 question is:
What animal?
I'VE have moles, skunks, chipmunks
squirrels, cats and dogs and ant-eating
birds. Yours truly, B. e.
Our guess is that a chipmunk got the
queen and some 20 or 80 of her children
in the pupa state.
The cells containing the young are
capped over and would require a bit of
digging out, not beyond an inquisitive
thing
AS many as $4,000 yellow jackets have
been found in one nest. In one such
structure of these social insects there
were 149 cells that had eggs or larvae.
These wasps build either in the
ground, in hollow trees, or under the
roofs of buildings.
Wasp larvae are fed on chewed-up
insects
Scientists regard certain mutual ex-
change of food between adult social
wasps and their young grubs as one of
the strangest facts in nature.
This happens when the queen or one
OF the worker-waSps comes with a
chewed fly to the cells filled with the
young.
The hungry larvae stick out their
heads and open their mouths.
Like young birds in nest, they are
fed, but in addition they also feed the
mother or workers.
Now If that isn't $64 something or
other!
While the grub is eating fluid trickles
from its salivary glands and this is
eagerly consumed by the adults.
In many cases the workers get food,
when they have none to offer the poor
grub, by the simple expedient of seizing
the grub's head in their jaws and push
ing it back into its cell.
This eXcites reflex action, with
drooling at the mouth. The hungry
worker gets his dinner and the poor
grub gets none.
Chipmunks eat acorns, beech and
hickory nuts, many seeds and grains,
insects in their various stages, even
birds eggs and their young.
Wasps have q strange liking for mail
boxes and often make nuisances of
themselves in this regard The black
and-white cat, Dubbie, never comes in
the front door but that he looks sidewise
at the mail box before he advances. He
has learned from experience, you see,
that stings are likely to come from that
direction.
Hornets destroy flies and other in
sects and thus should never be killed
indiscrtminately, nor their nests knocked
down. Is too often happens.
4.