244 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
The name of drones is ill applied to them, for they 
are always flying about, and, however little may 
come of their work, they are always busy—seduld 
inertia. 
Regardless of their presence, the business of the 
nest still goes on, day by day, the same unwearied 
industry continues, without intermission. So long as 
the queen lays eggs, so long as there are larvee to 
be fed, or wasps which can build, so long the swarm 
continues to work in active harmony, and the nest 
grows. But the end comes at last, and perhaps all 
the sooner when a bright sun and a good harvest of 
plums have supplied most freely the necessaries of 
wasp-life. The very favourable season, by increasing 
the activity and vitality of the swarm, may itself 
hasten the end. A nest may be found deserted 
before the summer has closed, before the cold and 
wet, the natural enemies of wasps, have set in, 
simply because the queen is prematurely exhausted, 
has lived, in fact, too fast. But, whether the wasps 
have straggled away from a feeling that they have 
no longer anything to do, and that in the loss of 
their work they have lost the tie which bound them 
to their busy home, or whether they have been killed 
by the wet and cold, the end in either case is sure. 
The swarm is dispersed and the delicate fabric is 
left as a covert or a prey to hardier insects; for so 
long at least as it holds together and resists the 
wind and rain of autumn. 
Sometimes a storm scatters the swarm and the 
results of all their labours to the winds. But, when 
a more gradual process of dispersion has left us the 
