. Economic entomology for the farmer and fruit-grower. Beneficial insects. 402 AN ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. connected with the thorax by means of a long stalk or pedicel. These belong to the family Sphecidce, of which the majority build their nests underground and provision them with spiders, caterpillars, or other larvae. Others, known as " mud-daubers," species of Pelopceiis, plaster their nests against out-houses, in all sorts of corners and under all sorts of l^iG. 456. shelters. They are sometimes built singly, but usually in groups, and may consist of either a shapeless mass of mud,
. Economic entomology for the farmer and fruit-grower. Beneficial insects. 402 AN ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. connected with the thorax by means of a long stalk or pedicel. These belong to the family Sphecidce, of which the majority build their nests underground and provision them with spiders, caterpillars, or other larvae. Others, known as " mud-daubers," species of Pelopceiis, plaster their nests against out-houses, in all sorts of corners and under all sorts of l^iG. 456. shelters. They are sometimes built singly, but usually in groups, and may consist of either a shapeless mass of mud, or may be regularly arranged, often with ribbed sides. The insects that build these nests are either metal- lic blue, or black marked with yellow, and here the pedicel connecting the abdomen with the thorax is unusually A mud-dauber, Peiopceus ^ ^^^ slender. The mud is carried species. * _ by the insect with its forelegs and jaws, and is applied carefully, pellet by pellet, to the nest, until the cells are completed. Then they are stored with some one kind of insect as food for the larva. If the insect begins on caterpillars, it continues to collect caterpillars, all of the same species, stinging, as already described, so as to paralyze them, and then packs them away in the cavity as closely as possible. Finally, when a cell is full, an ^^^ is introduced ; and now, when the young wasp hatches, it finds food in abundance at hand, and simply lives upon this supply, taking one caterpillar after another, or one spider after another, as the case may be. Some small species store their nests with plant-lice. These insects are to be considered as de- cidedly beneficial, and if the nests are sometimes unsightly and the wasps themselves a nuisance, yet, taken all in all, they deserve encouragement. The number of caterpillars destroyed by them in the course of a season is enormous. I have counted thirty canker-worms in a single cell, and have sometimes opened nests in which there were an
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