Wednesday 25 June 2014

A paper home, why not?

Wasps make paper nests. Wasps are expert paper makers, capable of turning raw wood into sturdy paper homes. A wasp queen uses her mandibles to scrape bits of wood fiber from fences, logs, or even cardboard. She then breaks the wood fibers down in her mouth, using saliva and water to weaken them. The wasp flies to her chosen nest site with a mouth full of soft paper pulp. The nest starts off in the spring with the queen building a petiole (a single stalk from which the nest hangs) and a single hexagonal shaped cell at the end of the petiole, then approximate six more cells are formed around the centre one. The queen will lay eggs in each cell as it is being constructed. Once these eggs have hatched out and gone through the developments stages and pupated into adult wasps, these new worker wasps take over nest construction and leave the queen solely to lay eggs and control the nest, this from now on is her primary function!


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