3i8 



THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



SOME OBSERVATIONS AND DEDUCTIONS RE- 

 GARDING THE HABITS AND BIOLOGY OF 

 THE COMMON WASP. 



By James Ritchie, M.A., D.Sc, The Royal Scottish 

 Museum, Edinburgh. 



A SUMMER holiday spent on Tvveedside during July of the 

 present year gave me opportunity for making a few observa- 

 tions on somewhat neglected points regarding the habits and 

 activities of Wasps. The observations are admittedly far 

 from complete, but I set them down here in the hope that 

 they may suggest a line of investigation which might be 

 applied, with interesting results, to different species of social 

 wasps, working under varying conditions of weather and 

 locality. 



A colony of the Common Wasp, Vtspa vulgaris, Linn., 

 had built its underground nest beneath a clump of forget-me- 

 not, in the midst of which the entrance was concealed. This 

 colony furnished the basis of the following notes. 



The Nest and its Contents. 



The adult life in the nest was exterminated by the 

 injection at night of a few drops of aqueous solution of 

 potassium cyanide through the entrance, which was at once 

 blocked by a pad of cloth also impregnated with the poison. 

 It was strange that while all the adult wasps were found 

 next morning killed outright, with one moribund exception, 

 the larvae in the nest seemed to retain their usual activity, 

 responding with violent wrigglings and rapid movements of 

 their jaws to any vibration on the cell-flat to which they 

 were attached. This resistance to the cyanide fumes seems 

 to indicate a much lower rate of metabolism in the larvai 

 than in the adult wasps. 



