SOLITARY AND SOCIAL WASPS 



in either sort of cell, but only in the lowest of the small ones. 

 How the queen comes to distribute her eggs in this way is not 

 known. The whole success of the colony is measured by 

 the number of large cells and therefore of young queens 

 which it can produce. In a temperate climate with a limited 

 breeding season, there must always be an optimum arrange- 

 ment. If worker production in small cells goes on too long, 

 there may not be time before the frosts to rear many queens. 

 On the other hand, the larger the nest and the greater the 

 number of workers, the more queens can be reared. 



Weyrauch has published records of the number of queens 

 and males produced by colonies of the different species of 

 wasp in Western Germany. The figures show that the bigger 

 the nest and the more combs of worker cells, the more queens 

 are produced. On the average, something between twelve 

 and forty worker cells correspond to each queen cell, and 

 these figures give some measure of the effort required to 

 produce a large, crop of queens. The colonies produced 

 between thirty and two hundred queens each, depending on 

 the species. The males appear to be about twice as numerous 

 as the queens. 



The sudden change in the type of cell constructed corre- 

 sponds to an important change in the whole behaviour of the 

 colony. After the change, it is supposed, either special queen- 

 producing eggs are laid, or else from then on the grubs are 

 given some special or more abundant food. But the question 

 of what makes queens develop instead of workers is the major 

 unsolved problem in the biology of wasps. There is really 

 no reliable information on which .to found a theory. There 

 is no evidence that a special or more abundant food is sup- 

 plied to the queen larvae. With progressive provisioning, a 

 larva will be given food as long as it accepts it, so that a 

 longer developmental period would mean that more food 



53 



