The foundress selected her nest site with great care. She had discovered a natural hollow in the fallen Gum tree, which was completely protected from the elements. Several years earlier, while the tree still stood tall, this cavity was the nursery to some Kookaburras. Before them, a pair of Boobook Owls successfully raised many nestlings in the same hollow. Before them, a colony of Gould’s Wattled Bats reared their brood here. Before this, Sugar Gliders and Possums sought the shelter of this space to safely raise their joeys. The large hollow, perched high above the ground, always provided protection from all but the most determined predators. Goannas and Butcherbirds posed the only danger to the creatures that called this hollow home.
Now however, the hollow lay on the underside of the tree, almost entirely buried and inaccessible to any but the smallest creature. It was a large space, almost two feet by two feet in area. The foundress fully intended to put it again to good use. Painstakingly she cleared an entrance by moving aside any tiny barriers such as twigs, leaves and little clods of mountain clay. Eventually she had clear access to the site. The entrance was imperceptible to anyone on the outside of the tree. She’d chosen well. The site would afford the colony a large measure of concealment and protection.
It was time to commence construction. To make the paper for her nest she stripped fibres from dead wood lining the cavity. These she chewed carefully, mixing them with her saliva. She moulded this papier-mâché like material into a short stem, or pedicel, and attached it to a gnarled bit of wood protruding into the roof of the hollow. After several minutes work, a cell gradually took form at the base of this stem. The entrance to this first cell was round. The young queen would gradually lengthen it as the nest grew. Only when other cells surrounded it on all sides would it take on the familiar hexagonal shape of wasp and Honeybee combs. However it differed significantly from a Honeybee cell. Whilst the queen bee formed her first cell from moulded wax produced by her own body, this queen continued to build with the paper she manufactured from bits of wood and saliva. Whereas the queen bee’s comb lay horizontal, this queen’s cell grew vertically and opened downwards. Her babies would grow in a topsy-turvy world, suspended upside down from the roof of their cramped, symmetrical paper cradles. Some invisible design blueprint lay in the mind of the foundress. Tirelessly she toiled and at the end of the first day, her first few cells hung near completion. Exhausted and hungry, she paused to rest. Outside of the nest, a perfect, warm spring afternoon was melding into a cool, still evening. Within the protective shelter of her hollow, the temperature remained even. But before she slept for the night she had one more vital task to complete. Backing into each unfinished cell, she deposited a single, sticky, milky-white egg. An inner urgency compelled her to commence egg laying even before the first cells were complete. Finally content, she positioned herself on a handy ledge and slept.
The nocturnal inhabitants of the little cave emerged to go about their nightly business. Suspended ominously above them hung the embryonic nest with the quiet form of the queen on guard. Little did they know that many of them would soon fall victim to this formidable new menace.
Over the coming days the foundress was exceedingly busy. She made regular forays from the nest to feast on nectar from the plethora of flowers crowding Beth’s untidy spring garden beds. She took her place beside the Honeyeaters and bees at the sweetest blooms, replenishing her energy for the task ahead. Frequent trips to the birdbaths on the lawn quenched her thirst and there she collected water for her papier-mâché creations. In between these outings, she continued nest construction. A second cell soon appeared alongside the first. Eventually she made a third one in the angle formed by the first two. As she did with the first, the impatient queen laid an egg in each cell as soon as the walls were partly built. She proceeded in a similar manner until a shelf of cells was formed, all hanging from the central paper stem. Her homemade paper was surprisingly strong. Beth knew that wasps had mastered the art of paper-making long before humans did. While man was laboriously scratching primitive symbols into rock faces, the wasps were already manufacturing their durable paper homes. Certain wasps perfected their own paper processing long before Beth’s ancestors were recognisably human. It is entirely possible that early man learned the art of paper-making from such wasps.
At about the same time as the foundress completed her first shelf of cells, she began to construct a paper envelope around them. This began as a parasol-like ceiling, which eventually extended around the entire nest, open only at the bottom. This envelope protected her growing brood from potential predators by restricting access points and making the nest easier to guard. It also helped to regulate the temperature within the nest. Over the next few days, she repeated this behaviour many times. She collected her construction material by walking backwards along the rotting wood lining the cavity, gathering a ball of fibre between her front legs with her mandibles, and then making a rapid inspection of the developing nest. The pulp was added either to an existing cell that appeared shorter than its neighbours, to the nest margin to start a new cell, or to the protective paper envelope.
She maintained a miraculous rule of symmetry, ensuring that the new addition intersected its neighbour at one hundred and twenty degrees. It was also equidistant from its parallel walls. The nest design was as ingenious as it was marvellous. The hexagonal shape of the individual cells provided the greatest possible amount of space with the least possible amount of construction material. Each of the six walls of any cell, acted also as a wall for an adjoining cell. Thus no space was wasted between the cells at any point. The young queen was certainly an architect par excellence. The hexagonal symmetry of wasp cells intrigued mathematicians, biologists and philosophers for centuries. Such celebrated names as Aristotle, Pliny, Kepler and Darwin all wrote treatise on the subject. Early critics of Darwin’s theory of evolution maintained that only God could endow insects with the power to construct such perfectly efficient shapes. The wasp’s ability continues to defy scientific explanation. The simple truth is that the young queen, ignorant of both God and science, achieved this miraculous feat again and again in the hidden silence under Beth’s fallen tree.
A week or so after nest construction commenced, the queen’s behaviour changed. Her building rate slowed and she spent more time checking and rechecking her brood cells. She made frequent trips to gorge herself at Beth’s nectar-bearing flowers in preparation for the next stage. For her first egg was about to hatch. The egg’s transformation into a larva was barely perceptible, but on the queens umpteenth cell check, she discovered that this first egg had acquired mobility and a mouth. The burden of satisfying larval appetite fell fairly and squarely on the young founding queen. In the world of wasps, the adults are mainly vegetarians, but the young require a hearty meat diet. The foundress, now with hungry mouths to feed, went hunting.
It was mid-morning when she emerged from the nest, intent on making her first kill. It did not take long. She flew to a nearby flowerbed as she’d done daily for the past few weeks. But for once she ignored the sweet, crimson Bottlebrushes hanging fecund and heavy on the Callistemon bushes. She flew slowly and deliberately past the Jasmine’s creamy flowers with their intoxicating fragrance. She ducked under the apple tree, resplendent in its spring blossom mantle. To the left of the apple tree, on an overgrown daisy-bush badly in need of pruning, the foundress spotted movement. She was about to demonstrate why the wasp has the reputation as one of the most energetic and efficient predators to be found anywhere in the animal kingdom. Her target was a pale green caterpillar of the Emerald Moth, often known as a “ looper “ or “inch worm”. Its body was attractively patterned with black dots and crescents. It was thin and somewhat cylindrical, and progressed along a leaf by stretching its front half to a new position and then bringing up the rear in one action.
The queen approached her prey downwind. The caterpillar, sensing danger, rose on its hind legs and remained motionless, mimicking a twig. But it was too late. At a distance of ten centimetres the queen could see her prey and smell it too. Swiftly she pounced, seizing the caterpillar by its neck and crushing its head with her powerful mandibles. The caterpillar, at forty millimetres, was a full ten millimetres longer than its attacker. It took all of the inexperienced queen’s strength to subdue her thrashing victim. European wasps use their stings only in defence, relying on superior force to overwhelm their prey. The queen would soon learn to pick on smaller targets as she honed her hunting skills over the coming week. However she felt satisfied at the success of her first kill.
Now came the difficult task of carrying her booty back to the nest. She briefly considered carving off a portion and returning later to retrieve the remainder, but her fear of thieves was too strong. It took some time for her to manoeuvre the caterpillar evenly beneath her body. Her major grip was with her mandibles. Her other legs also supported her load close beneath the centre of her body. Here it provided minimum disturbance to her equilibrium and was also shielded from unwelcome interference during the short, laboured flight to the nest. Upon arrival she located her concealed entrance hole with uncanny accuracy. While standing on her hind legs and holding the prey with her middle legs, she cleared away a little debris with her mandibles and front legs. As she entered the burrow she allowed the caterpillar to slip backwards so that she could drag it down the tunnel after her. At this time she released her grip with her middle legs, and grasped it with her hind legs. Using this method of kill retrieval, she confidently ranged widely in her search for prey. In no time she became a skilled and practiced killer who could return swiftly to her hidden nest and enter quickly without releasing her prize.
Nevertheless, this was a taxing and lonely time for the foundress. Her eggs were hatching quickly and the survival of the nest depended entirely on her ability to both survive and provide. On her return from a foraging mission, she chewed portions of her kill into a pasty mass. Very young larvae were fed on the liquid from the chewed meat. The queen also imbibed part of this liquid for her own nourishment. However she still preferred nectar, honeydew and plant sap for her main fare. Although now a fierce and accomplished huntress, she remained an almost complete vegetarian. Sweet juices, being an energy food, were suitable for adult wasps, but the rapidly developing wasplings required protein for their growth. Hence their need for meat. Fortunately the foundress was an excellent provider. While her young ate and grew, she continued her house building, extending the sides of the cell walls to keep pace with her babies increasing length.
Occasionally she rested or took time-out to groom herself. She polished her antennae between tiny spurs on her head. She cleaned her eyes with her forelegs. She cleaned her forelegs with her mandibles. During this procedure the queen resembled Beth’s cat, Spooky, as he contentedly licked his paws and washed his face after dinner. To clean her abdomen and her delicate wings the queen rubbed them against fine brushes on the inner side of her hind legs. She even groomed the open tip of her abdomen and its exposed sting. This grooming behaviour was essential for her health. It removed any particles of soil, pollen or other foreign matter that might interfere with her movement, vision or chemical senses, keeping her free of disease or infection.
The queen was a sun-loving creature, who revelled in the lengthening light and the warming temperatures. In fact she only foraged when there was at least partial sunshine. On grey, wet days she confined herself to her nest, feeding her young, and getting on with the endless task of nest extension. On such days she was not entirely without sustenance. Portions of insect prey remained in the nest from the previous day’s hunting. These she masticated and fed to the larvae, obtaining some nourishment for herself in the process. Her first born was now a week old. In its first few days the hatchling was held in place by little more than a mucous secretion and appeared to be in imminent danger of falling out of bed. But soon, as she grew sleek and fat, the sheer pressure of her body against the soft paper walls guaranteed her security within the cell. Nonetheless, she still hung helplessly, unable even to turn around.
Within a few more days the hatchling was big enough to extend her head a few millimetres over the edge of her cradle. This movement soon developed into a simple communication between the mother and her first-born. The queen, complete with a pellet of solid food, checked the nursery cell. She paused at its entrance and signalled her presence by rapidly tapping her head against the edge. The resulting vibration of the nest produced a brief buzz, clearly audible to the other inhabitants of the hollow below. An earwig paused in its food gathering. A startled King Cricket hopped for cover. A lumbering wood cockroach cocked its head to the side in puzzlement. The increasing hum of the nest was still a novelty in this previously quiet space.
The infant responded to her mothers tapping by extending her body and bringing her mouth clear of the cradle’s edge. She no longer resembled a slender hatchling, having already completed two ‘instars’ or moults. She was now distinctly grub-like, normally creamy in colour, but currently rendered green by the blood of her mother’s favourite caterpillar prey. Her head capsule was brown and she had neither eyes nor antennae. Her infantile jaws were well developed and seemed out of proportion to the size of her head. Powerful muscles already operated them. She possessed the beginnings of a spinneret, with which she would soon commence to weave a cocoon. Instead of legs she had fleshy lobes, which allowed her to make limited movements within the nest cell. She breathed through ten pairs of tiny spherical spiracles. Her body appeared smooth, but if viewed under high magnification, a covering of minute spines would have been visible. These helped her to remain securely within her inverted nursery.
After giving her baby the feeding signal, the queen thrust the food pellet against her mouth. The waspling reacted by exuding a drop of saliva and moving her jaws. The queen then imbibed the droplet. This transfer of fluid between baby and adult was much more than just an incentive to feed. It produced a social bond. The baby, on encountering the food offered by her mother, began to bite and tug at it. The queen held firmly onto the pellet until her youngster managed to pull a morsel free. As her first-born ate, the queen busily attended to her other youngsters. She was an intensely devoted mother, visiting each occupied cell frequently, and finding little time to rest. All of these first young were destined to be workers. They would be smaller than their mother and all would be female. However they would remain sexually immature and never mate. Before they attained adulthood they underwent a fantastic transformation known as metamorphosis. During this pupal stage, almost all larval tissue was miraculously broken down and reassembled into the adult form. Only the nervous system and part of the gut remained relatively unchanged.
While her babies developed safely within their nest, the foundress continued to hunt for hours, far and wide in all directions. It was marvellous how she always returned home without hesitation or uncertainty. How was it possible for her to unfailingly return in a direct line to a nest, which was so carefully concealed? On the surface it appeared to be a mysterious talent, attributable to an instinctive sixth sense; a sense of direction. This, however, was not quite fair to Her Ladyship’s intelligence, as better acquaintance with her would prove.
One might suppose that the scores of insects flying about on a spring day were part of an infinite, anonymous throng, ever travelling. The exact opposite of this was true. Beth’s garden was home to a limited number of insects that either resided there since birth or were permanent settlers. In April, the foundress spent her time sipping nectar from the onion flowers and sorrel that grew on the border of the garden. In May came the days of her courtship and honeymoon. These too were mainly passed in buzzing from bloom to bloom, from one part of the garden to another. In a state of torpor, she cosily overwintered in the tip of one of Beth’s old garden gloves. When she awoke from hibernation, she reentered a familiar world. September found her feeding on the blossoms of a row of bean plants in the vegetable garden, turning when she reached the end to leisurely wend her way back along the next row. During her nest building she made numerous short orientation flights so that she became perfectly familiar with the neighbourhood. The knowledge she developed was not instinctive, but learned. So it was not surprising after all, that she could carry her prey from any point in her territory in a direct line to her nest. She learned its location in the same way as Beth learned where her home was. They both depended on knowledge of the place based on their individual experience. They had a lot in common.