No. 2, however, was alone, so that we could keep a definite account of her comings and goings. We watched her from half past one until five, at which hour she came home without a load, and at once closed the nest for the night, after having stored thirteen bees in three hours and nine minutes. In some cases the capture of the bee occupied only one, two, or three minutes, while at other times she was gone much longer. At each return she stayed only an instant—just long enough to deposit the bee—inside the nest, and then spent a minute in carefully closing the hole. The wasps that were going in and out of nest No. 1 sometimes closed it when they went away, but this was done in an untidy fashion, quite different from the nicety and precision of No. 2. At half after five o’clock the wasp that had been digging for some little time at nest No. 1 flew to nest No. 2, opened it, and attempted to enter, but was quickly driven out by the owner. She then dug a little in several other places, finally returning to sleep in the family home. On the next day we found that No. 2 was tolerating in her nest one of the females that had not yet begun to hunt, but whether it was the one she had rejected the night before or the fourth member of the sisterhood, we could not tell. On the eighteenth, three days later, the wasp had left this temporary home and made a nest for herself four feet away on the hillside. The males were still living in the first nest with two females. When the weather was cold and cloudy punctatus remained closely housed within the nest, or, at most, came out to do an hour’s digging, and then disappeared. The warmer the weather, and the more brilliant the sunshine, the more rapidly they worked. When leaving the nest they would often creep out and walk around it three or four times before rising on their wings, and even then would sometimes alight once or twice before flying away. The males, especially, liked to stand about for a time, watching their more industrious sisters at their work. The females usually began the day with digging, and frequently closed it, toward night, in the same way. In order to see the method of stinging, we at one time provided ourselves with a number of bees, and putting one of them into a bottle, introduced a wasp. She seized it almost immediately, with great vigor, and stung it once, under the neck, and then dragged it up and down the bottle by one antenna which was held in the mandibles. After a moment she shifted it and held it with the second legs in the usual way. We now put in another bee, which she also caught, stung in the same place, and then dropped without relaxing her hold of the first one. As she seemed to have nothing further to show us we released her, and after circling a little she took into her nest the bee that she was carrying.