W ASP. 
boys being employed to catch them at that sea- 
son, being paid at so much per head. As there 
is as much amusement as profit in such a bee- 
hunt, they generally proved very successful; and 
a similar step may be safely recommended to all 
that suffer from thiscause. When infesting the 
fruit-trees in numbers during the autumn, one 
of the best and most common means of destroy- 
ing them is that described by the author of the 
“Splendid Shilling,” in a poem, which deserves 
to be known to horticulturists, written in praise 
of “ Cider :”>— 
‘¢ Myriads of wasps now also clustering hang, 
And drain a spurious honey from thy groves, 
Their winter food,* though oft repulsed, again 
They rally undismayed; but fraud with ease 
Ensnares the noisome swarms; let every bough 
Bear frequent vials, pregnant with the dregs 
Of moyle or mum, or treacle’s viscous juice; 
They, by the alluring odour drawn, in haste 
Fly to the dulcet cates, and crowding sip 
Their palatable bane: joyful thou’lt see 
The clammy surface all o’erstrewn with tribes 
Of greedy insects that, with fruitless toil, 
Flap filmy pennons oft, to extricate 
Their feet, in liquid shackles bound, till death 
Bereave them of their worthless souls. Such doom 
Waits luxury, and lawless love of gain.” 
The most attractive composition of this kind 
is vinegar and water, mixed with a little honey, 
sugar, or treacle. A bee-hive recently emptied 
of its contents, and still smelling strongly of 
honey, if exposed in a suitable place will attract 
a great number of wasps, and if bottles filled 
with some similar liquid be placed in or near it, 
many may be thus destroyed. Buta more effec- 
tual mode of destruction than any of these is to 
suffocate them in their nests. A writer in the 
Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural So- 
ciety affirms, that he found it easy to discover 
the nests, by observing, in a quiet sunny day, 
the course of the flight of the wasps from the 
garden, following them as far as he could notice 
them flying, then waiting till others passed the 
same way, which he likewise followed, and so on 
till he reached their habitation. Having disco- 
vered the nest, various methods may be adopted 
to destroy the inmates; but this should never be 
attempted but in the evening, when the whole 
colony is within, and can easily be taken by sur- 
prise. The writer just referred to introduced a 
match of damped gunpowder, which burnt like a 
squib, into the entrance-hole, then put his foot 
on it for a few minutes, and afterwards dug till 
he found the combs, when he threw a pailful of 
water upon them, and trod the whole together 
like mortar. In this way he destroyed fifty nests 
within 300 yards of his garden, without receiving 
a single sting. Rags dipped in sulphur will be 
found to answer the purpose perhaps better than 
anything else. The entrance to the vespiary 
should be a little widened, and the lighted rags 
* Few require to be told that the poet is here in 
error, wasps never laying up a store of provision for 
the winter. 
617 
introduced ; the hole should then be partly closed 
with small stones, but not so as wholly to exclude 
the air, which is necessary to keep up the com- 
bustion. In regard to the pendulous nests, it 
will be sufficient to apply the sulphur-rags or 
matches to the lower extremity, where the en- 
trance-hole is usually placed. 
“It is of very great importance that these 
marauders should be excluded from hothouses, 
as the delicate fruits there cultivated are speedily 
disfigured by their attacks; but this is no easy 
matter to accomplish, as the means taken to ad- 
mit air, so indispensable to such places, usually 
give free access to the insects likewise. Grapes 
are sometimes enclosed in paper or gauze-bags, 
which is both a troublesome and clumsy expe- 
dient. There seems to be no great difficulty in 
covering such portions of the frame-work as re- 
quire to be opened, with some kind of coarse 
gauze or wire-cloth, for insects do not readily 
pass through an obstacle of that kind, even when 
the meshes are pretty wide. Mr. John Dick re- 
commends for this purpose a kind of cloth which 
he calls scrime. This individual has likewise 
invented a canvass screen for covering wall-trees, 
which appears to be exceedingly well adapted 
for the purpose, as it not only proves an effectual 
protection from wasps and such-like insects in . 
the autumn, but also serves to protect the blos- 
soms from frost in the spring. A description 
and figure of it will be found in the 4th Volume 
of the Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural 
Society, from which body he received a reward | 
for the invention. 
““ Wasps are deservedly objects of peculiar dis- 
like to the cultivators of the honey-bee. In the 
autumn, they sometimes hover about the entrance 
to the hive in considerable numbers, at times 
killing the bees (which they do very adroitly, 
suddenly pouncing upon them, tumbling them 
on the ground, and with their serrated jaws 
speedily separating the abdomen, which contains 
the honey-bag, from the hard and sapless thorax), 
and frequently entering the hive in spite of all 
opposition, and feeding on the honey. ‘We have 
often observed one of these marauders,’ says Dr. 
Dunbar, one of the most skilful apiarians of the 
present day, ‘enter a hive with fearless intre- 
pidity, and, watching its motion through the 
glazed frame, have been astonished by its feats 
of strength and agility. In ascending the combs, 
it is, of course, instantly attacked by the rightful 
inhabitants; if one only venture to assail it, the 
unfortunate bee has no chance of victory, and 
but little of escaping with life; if five or six 
cluster round it, as is generally the case, and 
cling close to its body, endeavouring to pierce it 
with their stings, their efforts are set at nought 
by the intrepid wasp, which struggles with un- 
wearied obstinacy, rolls along the floor of the 
hive so closely enveloped in a mass of bees, that 
but little of its body is visible; and though at 
\ last it is forced by overwhelming numbers to 
