The Wonders of God’s Creation
In the sunny days of early spring, the queen paper-making wasp comes out of hibernation to build a paper nest. She usually hangs it from the eaves of a house or other building. This wasp is equipped with strong jaws, which she uses to chew old wood into a soft pulp. This pulp, mixed with the juices in her mouth, produces a product much like the paper used to make newspaper. With this material, she constructs the nest.
Before making the part of the nest that is lived in, she cements a stem of the same material onto the underside of the eave. Then she starts building the nest, beginning from the underside of the stem. She forms cells in rings that grow wider and wider, until the nest is completed. It looks something like a boy’s top, and may be as much as six inches wide. As each six-sided cell is added, an egg is laid in it and centered in place. Inside each cell she also deposits a little ball of nectar. It is attached next to the egg to pride food for the larva.
“Busy as a bee,” the wasp continues her work day after day, making paper for the cells out of old wood and laying her eggs. After the larva hatches from the egg, it rains attached to the side of the cell by its tail, because it is not ready to fly. By the time the larva finishes the nectar, it is ready for bigger things to eat. The queen and her workers then chew up cabbage worms and other insects and feed this to the larva. Thus large numbers of harmful insects are destroyed by these helpful wasps. In addition to food, water is brought to the larva by the worker wasps. In hot weather the workers also cool the nest by fanning with their wings and sometimes spraying it with water from their mouths.
Soon the larva is big enough to fill the cell. It then spins a cap over the bottom of its cell, forming a cocoon. Later it breaks through this and comes out as a fully-developed wasp.
We may well wonder at the abilities of these little creatures. Who taught them to manufacture “per” and form it into nests? How does the queen know how to cement the eggs and nectar into place? And how does she know when to put aside her nest-building and get food for her little ones? How do the larvae know how to spin their cocoons and cover their cells while going through the final process of becoming mature wasps?
Their ability to do these things did not come from experiments or a gradual development. It came from God, the Creator of all things, who “giveth to all life, and breath.” Yes, “His ways are past finding out.” How happy to know Him not only as the Creator, but what is most important—to know Him as our personal Saviour and Lord.
ML-06/14/1981