THE SOCIAL INSECTS 



three or four cells, there might be a desertion by one queen 

 who would join another, so that some nests were eventually 

 founded by two or three queens. At first all such queens 

 took a nearly equal share in the work and each of them would 

 lay eggs. But after a time one queen became dominant and 

 did more and more of the egg-laying, leaving the nest less 

 and less often. The others gradually ceased to lay eggs and 

 took on all the foraging duties. 



In north Italy, Pardi found that nearly every colony of 

 this wasp was founded by three or four queens. He has 

 described a process of active " terrorisation " by which one 

 of them becomes the real queen. She will attack the others 

 with open jaws, making a loud buzz. After a time she 

 establishes her position so securely that force is not required, 

 and the ovaries of the other queens degenerate, either because 

 the wasps work harder and have less food or because they 

 are not allowed to lay. Amongst these worker-like queens, 

 which Pardi calls auxiliaries, there is a regular order of domin- 

 ance, in which the queen always comes first. The position of 

 a wasp in the scale is shown most clearly in the disposition 

 of food, but it appears also in the frequency with which it 

 shows aggressive behaviour and lays eggs, and in the amount 

 of time it spends on the nest. A wasp high in the scale is 

 more likely to be given food by one of its inferiors and less 

 likely to give it away. Similar orders of precedence are known 

 in many mammals and in birds, such as chickens, which 

 live in groups. According to Pardi, when the first brood of 

 workers emerges, the auxiliaries all disappear, so that they 

 serve only to get the colony started and as far as is known 

 never found a colony of their own. 



In the Sahara, Weyrauch found that this same species of 

 Polistes founded colonies by swarming; that is, the founder 

 queen is accompanied by a number of workers. This is 



62 



