Don’t we all love to build safe homes for ourselves?  There is no place in the world like home. Not only is this saying true for humans, but also for the all the creatures. The most interesting among all house builders are tiny insects.

Some of their homes resemble  towers, apartment houses or even  log cabins. Are you surprised? It is really true. Ants, bees, wasps, termites and crickets are some famous home builders.

Honey Bees are social insects and so they like to live in an apartment like house or honey comb. Haven’t we all seen the mighty honeycombs hanging out of trees, balconies of the apartments or cavities in hollow trees. They construct their home out of wax. Did you know that the wax is produced by glands in the abdomen of the bee? Honey bee chews it and  deposits in such a way that combs are produced. The honey combs house the food and the young ones. Wouldn’t it be great if we could produce the raw materials to build our houses?  It would be so environment friendly.

The hardworking ants love to live in underground tunnels. Sometimes the loose soil and discarded food makes a mountain of soil above the ground and it is called an ant hill.

Wasps are clever house builders.  They chew up the wood and mix it up with their saliva. This changes to wood into a kind of paper. The paper is then used to build a house. Some wasps that like to live alone build mud houses. One such wasp is called a potter wasp because its nest looks like a clay pot.

Like ants, most termites will build their homes in underground, tunnels, inside the trees or woodwork of our homes. The skyscraper builder or termites of Africa build amazing above ground hills almost 30 feet in height. they are made up of  a mixture of soil and insect secretions. The soil used in the mixture comes from the underground tunnels of the nest.  There is proper ventilation in the mound so that it stays cool all the times.

While most of the insects live in colonies some like their personal space. Crickets are famous for their music but nobody knows that the cricket builds itself a new cozy home every day. it rolls up the inside of a leaf and sews the edges together with silk that it produces. Wow!

Aquatic insects like to crawl around in the tiny spaces among rocks, sticks, and dead leaves. There is one that builds a house around itself with pebbles and then spins a curtain of silk to close the door.

Insects are everywhere, and so are their homes.