Co-Operative Nest-Founding by the Wasp, Polistes Annularis Linn.

Abstract

I have on several occasions recorded the behavior of queen annularis wasps when they come out of hibernation in the spring and prepare to found new nests. They hibernate some distance from the home in which they spent their infancy and early adulthood, but usually fly back to the nest and visit it again and again on warm days in spring, later congregating and remaining on it for several days. Then in small groups they fly to nearby trees and commence their new nests.1 In addition to this well known method of co-operative colony-founding, I have observed, in the spring of 1940, that as the nest increases in size, other queens attach themselves to the colony and help the original foundresses carry on the work. By marking wasps with drops of paint, the following facts were gathered on a colony at Pacific, Missouri. In a low farm building, on May 1, I found a ten-cell nest of this species with two queens; six feet away was another Annularis queen just commencing her nest, while in a crack in the wall a little distance away, was an aggregation of three Annularis queens huddled close together. Near a window eight feet away was a large last year's nest of this species, which evidently gave birth to all the queens now under observation. The temperature during the day had dropped to 38 degrees F., and all the queens were in a sluggish condition and did not leave the nests.