CHAPTER I 

 SOME BEMBICINE WASPS 



BembLv nubilipennis Cress. [S. A. Rohwer]. 



The BembLv population burst upon us with a suddenness 

 which startled us into full attention at once. We had crossed 

 the field day after day, and, on that very day, June 16, 1914, 

 had passed by this certain bald, bare space in the field which 

 the boys of the neighborhood had, for a number of years, 

 kept packed hard for their Sunday baseball game (fig. 2) ; 

 but all had then, only an hour before, been as quiet and life- 

 less as the grey earth itself. Now the very air above the 

 surface of the bare ground seemed vibrant with the low- 

 flying wasps, which formed a wavering, yellowish-green 

 haze over the smooth, dusty earth. 



Any estimate of their numbers was very difficult to obtain 

 from the swiftly-moving swarm, but we suspect that at least 

 one or two hundred were present. The ground was dotted 

 with newly-opened holes, 1 less than one- fourth inch in diame- 

 ter, which seemed to go straight down and had no trace of 

 excavated dirt around their mouths; this evidence led us 

 to conclude that these wasps had all simultaneously emerged 

 by these exits from their winter quarters, to mingle in this 

 first social frolic or dance. They remained in their unceas- 

 ing flight at a uniform and constant height, all keeping, with 



1 We counted forty-four holes in one area three feet square, but we 

 could not be certain if all were holes of the emerging Bembix. 



