A NEST OF A SOCIAL WASP, 
VESPA AFFINIS, IN THAILAND 
(HYMENOPTERA: VESPIDAE)* 
By Thomas D. Seeley and Robin Hadlock Seeley 
Department of Biology 
Yale University 
New Haven, Connecticut 06511 USA 
The nests of the tropical Vespa species are very poorly known. 
Van der Vecht (1957) reviewed what little was known as of the early 
1950’s, and since then only a few additional reports have appeared 
(Sakagami and Fukushima 1957, van der Vecht 1967, Matsuura 
1971a, b, 1973, Matsuura and Sakagami 1973, Yamane 1977, 
Yamane and Makino 1977, Makino and Yamane 1980, Kojima and 
Yamane 1980). We now report observations made on a Vespa affinis 
nest in Thailand. 
We found the nest in a residential area in Bang Khen, a district on 
the northern outskirts of Bangkok. The nest hung in a mango tree 
(Mangifera indica) where it was thoroughly shaded and concealed 
by the tree’s thick foliage. The nest bottom was 1.4 m off the 
ground. We first observed the nest on 13 October 1979, at which 
time the nest was occupied by an evidently strong colony of wasps. 
During the daytime about 30 wasps, apparently guards, were 
scattered over the nest’s outer surface and there was strong flight to 
and from the nest. Several wasps were collected and have been 
placed as voucher specimens in the entomology collection of the 
Peabody Museum, Yale University. When we reexamined the nest 
on 21 October 1979 the wasps were gone. The people in whose yard 
the nest was built said the wasps had left earlier that day. We do not 
know why the wasps abandoned their nest. Many small ants (species 
undetermined) were scavenging on pupae left in the nest, but we do 
not know whether these ants had previously been attacking the wasp 
colony and so perhaps caused its absconding, or whether the ants 
had invaded the nest only after the wasps abandoned it. The owners 
of the nest reported that during the wasps’ approximately 9-month 
residence in their yard the wasps had not been disturbed by humans. 
* Manuscript received by the editor May 1, 1981. 
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