Evening star., 1949-09-08
This and That
Bp Charles E. TraceweH
SILVER SPRING, Md.

Dear Sir
"a few days previous to your setting the
fuse to the discussion OF wasps, which we
have followed with increasing interest, my
brother wrote, asking: Did you ever watch
a wasp family through the long summer
work of housing, feeding and rearing their
children? Keeps them stepping to keep up.
Almost simultaneously I discovered
wasps' nest, most thrilling moment. as
hadn't watched them in many years.
Main trouble is they located it on high
ceiling, so I must stand on box. with my
head tilted back to a neck-breaking angle.
Nevertheless, 1 have enjoyed watching 1t
grow from few insects and cells to quite a
number of each.
Like the poet, I am for the bees and
thankful they have come down through the
ages without change.
They are mans great ally; could they
reason, they might wage war OF their own,
and by refusing to accomplish their ap-
pointed tasks, leave this sorely troubled
world without vegetation.
"On the whole. have found them quite
friendly and think their dispositions de-
pend to great degree on whether one is
friend or foe of hurried movements or slow
in dealing with them.
II had a good laugh watching white
faced bee, with three white stripes circling
the tail, trying to extricate itself from be-
tween the screen and window swinging
out.
up a pane he would go time after time,
come back again to the screen ana ny
against it head on. The longer he tried,
the more agitated he became, TILL ne nnally
found way around.
IT have found medium sized hornets
nest Just about foot off the ground Would
like to add it to my collection; but If left
undsturbed, will they return to set up
housekeeping in it another season?
II am. sincerely. J. c. E."
Ants, bees and wasps belong to the order
Hymenoptera, to most persons the most in
teresting of all insects.
Their lack in the world would not exactly
ruin agriculture, as our good correspondent
thinks, but undoubtedly would cause the
extinction of apples, cherries and many other
fruits, as we'll as of melons, squashes and
cucumbers There would be no red clover.
and few wildlowers. It would be strange
world. indeed.
Wasps usually are divided into two groups,
the social and solitary. Those that dig bur-
rows belong to the latter.
The cicada-killer and mud-dauber belong
to this latter group.
sembe little water jug. They are attached
to low plants, or even to grass. The abdo-
men of this species somewhat resembles
an earring of the old-fashioned type.
The carpenter wasp is another solitary
wasp, He builds his tunnels in wood, with
the cells divided from each other by mud
partitions.
Social wasps include the familiar black
or rust-colored species scientifically called
Polistes pallipes, which build uncovered
paper combs in safe places
Other social wasps are yellow-jackets,
the white-faced hornet and the English
hornet.
The typhia wasp has been introduced
from Japan as a parasite to help eradicate
the japanese beetle.
With most of these wasps, the queens are
the only ones to survive the winter. They
crawl away to hibernate, and in the spring
seek new site. This means that the old
site is not used again, except by chance.
Bundle bees and honey bees seem to
belong to this group by every right, espe-
cially since they are good stingers, one OF
the traits they have in common with the
wasp.
What all these creatures do by instinct
must cause every careful human observer
to revise somewhat his often careless eSti-
mate of instinct. which he is inclined to look
down on. in comparison with thinking
things out"
Many persons have come to think in
recent years that the intelligence of man
is bit overrated. They feel that thinking
may be leading us into a dead end from
which there is no returning. The last book
written by a very brainy man. H. G. Wells.
was called Mind at the End of Its Tether."
Was he right or will man be able to think
himself out of the complicated mess he has
got himself into7