344 Wasps : Their Life-History and Habits. [Sess. 



at a meeting of the committee of the Fifeshire Bee-keepers' 

 Association, we agreed to collect all the queen wasps we 

 could get. I set to work, determined to do it well, and in a 

 few weeks had collected a number that surprised me very 

 much. Although I knew I would get many, I was not 

 prepared for 640, which was the number I killed. On going 

 to catch or kill a queen wasp in the spring, one has to be 

 very careful how he goes about it, as she is very sharp with 

 both ear and eye, and if the first chance is missed there is 

 very little hope of a second. For several days that queen 

 will be exceedingly wary, and seem always to be on the 

 watch, and you are very unlikely to get within six or eight 

 feet of her. It may be imagined that I must have' gone over 

 a large stretch of country in order to collect so many queen 

 wasps, but such is not the case, for, with the exception of a 

 very few, say the odd 40, which my boys killed, the 600 

 were all got within a space of about 200 yards in length by 

 100 in breadth. That will give you some idea of the number 

 of queens that get safely through the winter. If all, or even 

 the half, of these wasps formed a colony, they would be a 

 perfect pestilence ; but the birds are always very busy among 

 them, and kill many. Another thing that destroys many 

 of them in the spring is the wet weather, which kills more 

 than the cold. A wet autumn also kills many. If the 

 winter has been a very mild one, with a week or two of warm 

 weather in the end of March or beginning of April, it often 

 brings out the wasps, and then a few cold wet days and 

 nights will kill most of those that have moved from their 

 winter quarters. A severe winter and a late spring will give 

 us more wasps — and other insects — than a mild one, as in a 

 cold winter and spring they remain dormant until the fine 

 weather : then they come from their winter quarters vigorous 

 and lively. The idea of many that a severe winter kills 

 numbers of insects is scarcely correct. I believe a mild winter 

 is more harmful to insect life. 



But we left our queen gathering fibre to make her nest 

 with : we shall now follow her to the place she has selected, 

 which in this case is under the roof of a beehive, where she 

 arrives and lays the foundation of her nest, house, castle, or 

 palace, any of which names may with justice be given to it. 

 It is really a beautiful structure. The queen or mother wasp 



