The April 2011 issue of online science-fiction magazine Clarkesworld features a story by E. Lily Yu called “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees,” which is exactly about what it sounds like it’s about. It’s set in reasonably contemporary China, where “it was discovered that the wasp nests of Yiwei, dipped in hot water, unfurled into beautifully accurate maps of provinces near and far, inked in vegetable pigments and labeled in careful Mandarin that could be distinguished beneath a microscope.” I do love fantasy and science fiction tales with maps at their heart, but that shouldn’t surprise you.