This essay represents a lecture I gave when I won the Ohio State University Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, the highest teaching award OSU gives. …

Taken together, the social wasps (those that live in colonies) are probably the best animal architects on planet Earth, displaying a great diversity of nest forms and executing impressive engineering. Their nests permit them to live from the Arctic to the tropical rain forest to the desert, in the tops of trees and underground. This general overview highlights certain of the forms and functions of the nests, and how the wasps organize labor to build them.