Robin Bruce, age 7, of Timmonsville, S.C., for her question:

HOW DOES THE WASP MAKE HIS NEST?

Some wasps live in colonies and are called social wasps. Included in this group are hornets and yellow jackets. The other kind lives alone. He's known as a solitary wasp.

Social wasps are papermakers. They build their nests of wasp paper which is a mixture of old wood and tough plant fibers. Wasps chew this material to a pulp, adding a lot of saliva, and then form it into feltlike masses. The completed wasp nest is made of rows of cells, much like those of a bee honeycomb.

The solitary wasp makes mortar out of mud and saliva and shapes dainty mud nests that look like urns. Sometimes two or three cells are fastened together on one twig.

In each cell nest the female places insects and then lays an egg which becomes a larva in a few days.