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out for winter quarters, in which they remain in a 
torpid state till the warmth of spring again revives 
them. They conceal themselves in decayed stumps 
of trees, and under masses of moss and dead leaves, 
or under the tiles or slates of the roofs of houses. 
I dug out several during the last winter, and very 
frequently found humble bees in the same situ- 
ations. ‘The males and neuters die without excep- 
tion, as soon as they have fulfilled the great end of 
their creation, and nearly all the authors assert that 
only a few females survive the rigour of the winter. 
This assertion is certainly difficult to be proved, and 
its truth has been inferred from the deficiency of 
wasps in some seasons, when they had been parti- 
cularly abundant the year before. In the summer 
of 1832 I could not find a single tree wasp’s nest, 
and only two or three of the ground species; but I 
conceive that the failure of wasps in such seasons 
depends more on the rigour of the spring, which 
often benumbs and destroys the females which had 
been tempted to leave their winter retreat too early, 
than on their being unable to resist the frosts of 
winter, when they are in a torpid state, and less 
likely to be affected by cold. I have observed 
great numbers of hive bees destroyed in a cold wet 
spring from the same cause, as well as other insects 
which had not the shelter of a hive to protect them, 
but which had nevertheless survived the frost of 
winter in a torpid state. Wasps are found to live 
through a Norwegian winter, and therefore no frost 
that occurs in this climate is likely to affect them *. 
* Mr. Knight supposes that when a large number of females 
has appeared in the spring, and very few nests are found in the 
summer months, the failure proceeds from a deficiency of 
