SOME SOCIAL WASPS 253 



Experiment IV 



June 25. The results of this experiment will have to be 

 ignored, but are recorded here to save confusion later. In 

 this test, queens 8, 4 and 15 were liberated from a moving 

 train. Since they never came home, we do not know 

 whether they died or got lost as did the others, or became 

 entangled in the whirlwind and were drawn under the 

 wheels. Nevertheless, like the novelist who must gracefully 

 dispose of his characters when they are of no further use, so 

 let this record dispose of queens 4, 8 and 15. The nests 

 which they left behind were, of course, thereafter orphan 

 nests; we shall have more to say later of the orphan workers. 



THE HOMING OF WORKERS AND QUEENS 



The workers were beginning to emerge. This necessi- 

 tated the adding of marks of identification on their bodies. 

 This was very artfully done without injury to the insects. 

 Fabre attributes the failure of many of his insects to return 

 to the nest to injury in handling when being marked. By 

 our method, injury was avoided, and, if an individual failed 

 to return, there was no cause to blame but its own .stupidity 

 or its youthfulness. In taking the wasps for marking, a wire 

 fly-trap was usually placed over the nest and the inmates 

 shaken into it, carried thus to the laboratory, permitted to 

 escape one at a time to a window pane where they were 

 picked up with a wad of soft cotton and gently held be- 

 tween the fingers while paint was applied in the desired 

 colors and number of dots. The markings on the thorax 

 were most practical, for here they were retained for life, 

 whereas on the abdomen it was possible for the wasps to 

 clean them off after several days. 



