More Hunting Wasps 



thing to do would be to offer the grub honey 

 from the first, before artificial rearing has 

 affected its appetite. It is useless, of course, 

 to make the attempt with pure honey: no car- 

 nivorous creature would touch it, though It 

 were starving. The jam-sandwich is the 

 only device favourable to my plans, a meagre 

 jam-sandwich, that is to say, the dead Bee 

 lightly smeared or varnished with honey by 

 means of a camel's-hair pencil. 



Under these conditions, the problem is 

 solved with the first few mouthfuls. The 

 grub that has bitten into the honeyed prey 

 draws back In disgust, hesitates a long time 

 and then, urged by hunger, begins again, 

 tries this side and that and ends by refusing 

 to touch the dish. For a few days It pines 

 away on top of Its almost Intact provisions; 

 then it dies. All that are subjected to this 

 regimen succumb. Do they merely perish of 

 inanition in the presence of an unaccustomed 

 food, which revolts their appetite, or are 

 they poisoned by the small quantity of honey 

 absorbed with the early mouthfuls? I can- 

 not tell. The fact remains that, whether 

 poisonous or repugnant, the Bee In the state 

 of bread and jam is death to them; and this 

 result explains, more clearly than the un- 

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