154 E. M. CAMPBELL—OLE, SOCIAL WASPS. 
It is curious to find that communities of the wasps and humble- 
bees endure but a few months, while those of the honey-bees and 
some of the ants will, under favourable circumstances, last for 
many years. In the case of the honey-bee a swarm issues from 
the over-populated parent stock, composed of the queen, drones, 
and workers, to find fresh pastures, while a sufficient number of 
bees are left behind to assist the selected young queen in her 
maternal duties. Eut the wasps make no such migration. The 
males and the old queens and workers all die when the autumn 
frosts set in, while the young queens, which have yet to lay their 
eggs, hie away to find protection in some quiet nook, where they 
remain until the first bright days of spring. It is then that they 
sally forth in search of a suitable place to commence their nests, 
and frequently fall victims to some one who destroys them as 
depredators of fruit and progenitors of countless enemies of 
humanity. 
Should any of my hearers ever he induced to commit such a 
regicide, or rather reginacide, I beg they will remember that the 
insect itself and its offspring, if allowed to survive, would remove 
from both field and garden incalculable numbers of small cater¬ 
pillars and other larvae which are so harmful to vegetation. It 
certainly seems strange that people should grudge the wasps their 
share of the fruit they help to preserve. The constant war waged 
against wasps and hornets may end in a plague of flies, just as 
the destruction of hawks has led to a superabundance of small 
birds. 
Eut I am met with a reply to my plea for mercy that “ wasps 
sting.” Of course they do when interfered with, hut how few 
persons are stung who leave them alone! They never use their 
sting unprovoked; they mind their own business, and can he 
watched and studied with greater safety than bees. There is 
but little danger of being pricked by a wasp hovering round 
the room, but if you provoke it to declare war there is no doubt 
about either its intentions or its success, so rapid are its move- 
meets. There are many so-called cures for stings, ranging from 
ipecacuanha to the blue bag, but, to use the words of the great 
Hunter, “ I have heard of cures, but I never experienced one.” 
Let us return to one of our young queen wasps. We left her 
for a season stowed away in a corner. Occasionally she may have 
taken a flight in the milder days of winter, but it is in the early 
spring that she begins her serious duties of life, and sets to work 
house-hunting. Unlike the hive-queen, she is alone in the wide 
wide world, with no friend to help her. She has many enemies 
besides man, yet, unaided, she has to find and make her home and 
rear the first brood. Food is scarce, and the very sunshine which 
she needs for her own vitality is also required to provide her with 
prey. She is constantly exposed to the cold rains and late frosts 
which destroy so many of her sisters, and which this year had the 
effect of reducing the wasp population in the Home Counties in 
a very marked degree. We will, however, suppose that our young 
