SOLITARY AND SOCIAL WASPS 



nests suspended in bushes or trees instead of underground. 

 It is considerably commoner in the north and west than it is 

 in south-east England. The hornet, Vespa crabro is much 

 larger than the other species, and has lately been getting 

 much more common. It is chiefly found in southern, especi- 

 ally south-east England, and twenty years ago was rarely 

 seen, except in the New Forest and in some parks near 

 London, such as Richmond Park. It is now quite common 

 all round London, though being so conspicuous it does not 

 take many to produce an impression of numbers. 



It seems that the hornet is not nearly so ferocious as its 

 appearance suggests. It is much the largest of our wasps, and 

 its colour makes it very conspicuous; this may indeed have 

 some value in preventing attacks by insectivorous birds. 

 But from the human point of view what matters is the willing- 

 ness of the wasp to use its sting. I have never been stung by 

 a hornet, and I have been told by a friend who had the task 

 of removing a nest from the roof of a thatched cottage that 

 he was able to do this without wearing any protective cloth- 

 ing and without being stung by the workers which were 

 flying around. One certainly cannot do this with the larger 

 nests of the common wasp, and this may be partly due to the 

 relative numbers of workers. As we have seen, the more 

 workers there are, the more aggressive their behaviour, and 

 a hornets' nest rarely has more than a few hundred in- 

 habitants. 



Wasps very like the British ones are found in all countries 

 with temperate climates, except in South America and the 

 Australian region. The tropics are mostly occupied by social 

 wasps of other types. The hornet, though itself an inhabitant 

 of temperate climates, belongs to a tropical group found 

 chiefly in Asia and the East Indian islands. The hornet some- 

 times works very late on warm nights. Amongst its Malayan 



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