46 
Psyche 
[March 
the wasp stayed still, clinging to the wall of the chamber, but when 
picked out with finger and thumb, it stung the thumb, producing a 
sting about like that of a honeybee in intensity of pain and duration. 
For a few seconds the wasp eluded capture and ran slowly over the 
captor’s hands, without attempting to fly. It was soon put into 
alcohol. 
Next, the other end of the stick was twisted open, though without 
much expectation of finding anything — unfortunately, because in 
the darkness and confusion of the storm’s beginning, it was not seen 
what part of the stick’s contents were dropped on the ground and 
lost. What was found within were five more of the wasps, all resting 
in one large, irregular, continuous chamber or hollow. Some ran 
slowly over the collector’s hands before being put into a plastic bag 
with the remains of the stick, and it is not known whether there had 
been more wasps that escaped clean away without being seen. Later 
indoor examination of the fragments of rotten stick turned up only 
the five adult wasps (four females and one male) in addition to the 
one female put in alcohol at the collection site. 
The significance of this aggregation is unknown. The wasps are 
fully pigmented, and do not seem to have been associated with 
cocoons or large prey remains. They were resting together in 
hollows (beetle or millipede burrows?) much larger than their own 
bodies. Perhaps this was a “sleeping aggregation” during daylight 
hours (or rainy weather). In temperate areas, certain Bethylidae 
form clusters under the bark of trees during the winter (e.g., 
Holepyris hahiJis, Evans 1977). 
There is also the remote possibility that Scolebythus is at some 
relatively advanced stage of presocial behavior. The unfortunate 
circumstance that much of the contents of the stick were dropped 
and lost prevents us from knowing whether eggs or small brood, or 
possible small prey, may have been present. One of the females, 
chosen at random, was dissected, and the ovaries proved to contain 
a number of elongate ova. It seems useless to speculate luither 
about these matters without more evidence, but it is worth empha¬ 
sizing that the kind of aggregation observed is unusual and should 
be investigated from the life-history and behavioral points of view. 
Sting Apparatus (Figs. 1-6) 
The following description is based on a single specimen, prepared 
as described in Kugler (1978). The terminology is that of Daly 
