OBSERVATIONS ON VESPA GEBMANICA. 463 



stage by Aug. 5th. On Aug. 6th I noticed a great slackness in 

 work ; only a little food was brought in, and a general inertness 

 seemed to prevail. Some of the wasps still kept hard at work, 

 but a large percentage spent their time motionless on the nest 

 and the sides of the box, or else in cleaning each other. This 

 state of things lasted till Aug. 13th, when I noticed that some- 

 thing of the old activity was resumed, and a larger supply of 

 food was being brought in. It was therefore obvious that, since 

 the original eggs must have passed to the pupa stage by now, 

 one or more of the workers had themselves laid some. 



I was now away for a few days, so do not know what hap- 

 pened, but on my return on Aug. 28th I found a number of 

 drones in the nest. They continued to increase in numbers for 

 the next few days till there were quite thirty of them. They 

 were very sluggish in their movements, crawling about the 

 window the whole day, with occasional flights outside, and 

 creeping back to the nest at night. They were also extremely 

 greedy, feeding on the honey I put in the box for them till they 

 were positively bloated, and could hardly crawl out of the dish 

 and back to the nest, dragging their honey-distended abdomens 

 on the ground as they went. It was obvious that the nest was 

 breaking up, for the workers had ceased all work, many of them 

 died, and the rest were entirely devoid of energy. Since many 

 of them had died in the nest, it became tainted, and I was 

 forced, on Sept. 7th, to throw it away, although there were still 

 some half-dozen wasps or so crawling about it. 



