298 DESTRUCTION OF THE MOTHER WASP. 



wasps, who about that time are roused from their hibernating 

 state, and sally forth to found their colony in ruined walls 

 or banks. The destruction of one queen wasp is tantamount 

 to the destruction of hundreds, and, we may add, of thou- 

 sands of wasps; and as in that early part of the season, 

 there is not a common wasp in existence, the bee master 

 ought to congratulate himself upon the death of every large 

 wasp that he can accomplish, for he may be certain that it 

 is a mother wasp. In some parts of Scotland, the wasps are so 

 numerous, that the existence of every hive is endangered ; 

 and as few of the cottagers are aware of the injury, which the 

 wasps commit upon their hives, they are suffered to carry on 

 their depredations with impunity, until the hives are wholly 

 destroyed. In Perthshire, we killed one morning twenty-nine 

 mother wasps ; calculating, therefore, that a wasps' nest con- 

 tains, on an average, six hundred wasps, we that morning 

 prevented the birth of 23,400 robbers, to be let loose upon 

 the world, to live upon the labours of the industrious bee. 

 If the bee master cannot spare the time, nor is possessed of 

 patience sufficient to continue the chace after a mother wasp, 

 let him offer a premium to the cottage boys for every mother 

 wasp, that they will bring him. We offered a penny to the 

 urchins living in the immediate vicinity of our apiary for 

 every wasp that they would bring us, and not an evening 

 elapsed without a call being made upon us for fifteen or 

 twenty murdered mother wasps. 



Some persons are apt to suppose that the stopping up of 

 a wasps' nest, is equal to its destruction. There is, however, 

 no truth in the supposition, for it is wonderful in what 

 manner these insects will work their way through a barrier, 

 supposed to be impenetrable. We have frequently plastered 

 up the aperture of a wasps' nest at the close of the evening, 

 by which we supposed that we had accomplished the death of 

 the inmates of it by gradual starvation ; but on visiting the 

 nest on the following morning, we have found, to our surprise, 



