A wasp is any species of the genus Vespa or of the family Vespidae, particularly the common wasp, V. vulgaris. It lives in a hole in the ground, generally about six inches beneath the surface, approached by a crooked entrance of about an inch in diameter. This passage leads to a subterranean room, in which is the vespiary made of gray paper or pasteboard in layers one above the other, and constituting a ball of 13 or 14 inches in diameter, and pierced with two round holes, through which the wasps come in and go out. The interior is occupied by horizontal tiers of combs, like floors in a house, supported by columns, and with passages between. Each cell is hexagonal, as in the combs of bees, but the material is paper. These tiers of cells are built in succession, the upper ones first.Sexually wasps are of three kinds, males, females and neuters, the two latter armed with an exceedingly venomous sting. The last are the workers in the hive; they also go out to bring in provisions for the community. Wasps are nearly omnivorous, feeding on honey, jara, fruit, butcher's meat, and any insects which they can overpower. A share of these viands is given to the males and females, whose work lies more in the vespiary. The cells of a large nest may amount to more than 15,000. In these the females, which are few in number, deposit eggs, hatched in eight days into larvae. These again go into the chrysalis state in 12 or 14 days more, and in 10 more are perfect insects. The males do no work. Most of the workers and all the males die at the approach of winter, and in the spring each surviving female having been impregnated in autumn, looks out for a suit-able place to form a new vespiary. A wasp's nest may be destroyed by burning sulphur inside the hole. The economy of the other social wasps is essentially the same, whether like V. holsatica, they build a nest of paper in trees, or, like other Polistes, place their combs in trees or bushes without a papery defense. The economy of the solitary wasps is essentially that of their type, Odynerus, differing only in the material and locality of their nests, some building them of clay or agglutinated sand, and attaching them to or placing them in holes in walls, while a few burrow in sandy ground.
