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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
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Mon, 12 Oct 2020 20:17:22 -0400
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Various species of wasp make cells as intricate and exacting as do honey bees, as described here:

The wasps' industriousness as builders and cleverness as architects are appreciated even by those of us who dread unexpectedly discovering them making their home in the shelter of our own. Their elegant paper nests sometimes attract attention as decorative curios in markets. These nests can be the size of a thimble or more than a meter long, as durable as hard felt or more fragile than egg shells, more regular and uniform than the much-celebrated honeybee comb or wildly chaotic with an intricate mazelike interior. 

Indeed, variation in nest architecture between distantly related species is far more striking than is the morphological variation, and some species were initially sorted into certain genera primarily based on their nests. Recent treatments demonstrate that architecture-related behaviors are particularly useful at tracing phlyogenetic lineages in many animals (Wenzel, 1992a) and that architectural details of wasp nests reflect well the relationships derived from morphological study (Wenzel, 1993).  

Brood combs are usually one sided, with an hexagonal arrangement of cells sharing thin (less than 0.5 mm) walls. There are no specialized storage chambers, but one may find honey or prey ants and termites stored in ordinary brood cells or in spaces between envelope sheets. Carton nests of ants are usually composed of a coarse uneven envelope only, and never include a hexagonal comb.

— Wenzel, J. W. (1998). A generic key to the nests of hornets, yellowjackets, and paper wasps worldwide (Vespidae, Vespinae, Polistinae). American Museum novitates; no. 3224.

¶

It is obvious that paper wasps intentionally construct hexagons, they do not modify cylinders. Often the nest will be started by a single hexagonal cell from which the others radiate. Mud wasps make cylinders as the material is abundant and not really amenable to intricate structures. Wasp nest cells often open downward but some species build on the side of surfaces with the cells projecting horizontally one way — outward. Downward orientation undoubtedly helps keep the cells clean, as debris would tend to fall

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