Mr. Knight on the Economy of Bees. 243 
or themselves. But if one escape from within, it comes with 
a very different temper, and appears commissioned to avenge 
public wrongs, and prepared to sacrifice its life in the execution 
of its orders. I discovered the circumstance, that wasps thus 
excluded from their nest would neither defend it, nor them- 
selves, at a very early period of my life ; and I profited so 
often, by the discovery, as a school boy, that I am quite 
certain of the fact I state ; and I do not entertain any doubt, 
though I speak from experiments less accurately made, that 
the actions of bees, under similar circumstances, would be the 
same.* 
Mr. Hunter conceived bees wax to be an animal substance, 
which exuded between the scales of the belly of the insect 
but I am strongly disposed to believe that it is collected from 
plants, and merely desposited between the scales of the belly 
# A curious circumstance, relative to wasps, attracted the notice of some of my 
friends last year, and has not, I believe, been satisfactorily accounted for. A greater 
number of female wasps were observed in different parts of the kingdom, in the spring 
and early part of the summer of that year, than at almost any former period ; yet 
scarcely any nests, or labouring wasps, were seen in the following autumn ; the cause 
of which I believe I can explain. Attending to some peach trees in my garden, late 
in the autumn of the year 1805, on which I had been making experiments, I noticed, 
during many successive days, a vast number of female wasps, which appeared to have 
been attracted there by the shelter and warmth of a south wall ; but I did not observe 
any males. At length, during a warm gleam in the middle of one of the days, a single 
male appeared, and selected a female close to me; and this was the only male I saw 
in that season. The male wasp, which is readily distinguishable from the female and 
labourer, by his long antenna: and shining wings, and by a blacker and more slender 
body, is rarely seen out of the nest, except in very warm days, like the drone bee ; 
and the nests of wasps, though very abundant in the year 1805, were not formed till 
remarkably late in the season ; and thence I conclude that the males had not acquired 
maturity till the weather had ceased to be warm, and that the females, in consequence, 
retired to their long winter sleep without having had any intercourse with them. 
