ATTRACTING QUEENS 107 



I also adopted the plan of examining all the 

 domiciles every tenth day or so, replacing the nest 

 material if wet, which was often the case, with dry 

 material. The sods were lifted with an ordinary 

 digging fork. When making these examinations I 

 carried in my pocket a note -book, in which was 

 recorded anything of interest that was noticed about 

 the nests.. 



Nine out of the forty domiciles were tenanted by 

 queens three lapidarius, a terrestris, and a hortorum 

 having been attracted in May, and two lapidarius, a 

 ruderattis, and an unknown queen early in June ; but 

 only three of the queens, namely, two lapidarius 

 and the ruderattis, remained until their larvae span 

 their cocoons, and only one, a lapidarius, succeeded 

 in hatching out her first workers and in establishing 

 a colony. I formed the conclusion that the majority 

 of the queens, after having occupied the nests and 

 started to breed in them, found them so unsuited to 

 their requirements that they abandoned them. The 

 dampness of the nests or the vermin, or both, had 

 driven them away. 



During the next three years no further domiciles 

 were prepared, but in 1909 two flourishing colonies 

 with workers, one of terrestris and the other of 

 rtideratus were found to be occupying two of the 

 artificial domiciles made in 1906. Of course, by 

 this time the ground had become perfectly hard, 

 and the nests resembled natural nests. The nest 

 material, though rotten and scanty, proved to be, on 

 examination, not that which I had placed in the 



