An Introduction to Entomology: Vol. 2 / or Elements of the Natural History of the Insects

by William Kirby; William Spence

The first of these animals, wasps, (Vespa)—with whose proceedings I shall begin,—we are apt to regard in a very unfavourable light. They are the most impertinent of intruders. If a door or window be open at the season of the year in which they appear, they are sure to enter. When they visit us, they stand upon no ceremony, but make free with every thing that they can come at. Sugar, meat, fruit, wine, are equally to their taste; and if we attempt to drive them away, and are not very cautious, they will often make us sensible that they are not to be provoked with impunity. Compared with the bees, they may be considered as a horde of thieves and brigands; and the latter as peaceful, honest, and industrious subjects, whose persons are attacked and property plundered by them. Yet, with all this love of pillage and other bad propensities, they are not altogether disagreeable or unamiable; they are brisk and lively; they do not usually attack unprovoked; and their object in plundering us is not purely selfish, but is principally to provide for the support of the young brood of their colonies.

The societies of wasps, like those of ants and other social Hymenoptera, consist of females, males, and workers. The females may be considered as of two sorts: first, the females by way of eminence, much larger than any other individuals of the community, equalling six of the workers (from which in other respects they do not materially differ) in weight, and laying both male and female eggs. Then the small females, not bigger than the workers, and laying only male eggs. This last description of females, which are found also both amongst the humble-bees and hive-bees, were first observed amongst the wasps by M. Perrot, a friend of Huber's[115]. The large females are produced later than the workers, and make their appearance in the following spring; and whoever destroys one of them at that time, destroys an intire colony, of which she would be the founder. They are more worthy of praise than the queen-bee; since upon the latter, from her very first appearance in the perfect state no labour devolves,—all her wants being prevented by a host of workers, some of which are constantly attending upon her, feeding her, and permitting her to suffer no fatigue; while others take every step that is necessary for the safety and subsistence of the colony. Not so our female wasp;—she is at first an insulated being that has had the fortune to survive the rigours of winter. When in the spring she lays the foundation of her future empire, she has not a single worker at her disposal: with her own hands and teeth she often hollows out a cave wherein she may lay the first foundations of her paper metropolis; she must herself build the first houses, and produce from her own womb their first inhabitants; which in their infant state she must feed and educate, before they can assist her in her great design. At length she receives the reward of her perseverance and labour; and from being a solitary unconnected individual, in the autumn is enabled to rival the queen of the hive in the number of her children and subjects; and in the edifices which they inhabit—the number of cells in a vespiary sometimes amounting to more than 16,000, almost all of which contain either an egg, a grub, or a pupa; and each cell serving for three generations in a year; which, after making every allowance for failures and other casualties, will give a population of at least 30,000. Even at this time, when she has so numerous an army of coadjutors, the industry of this creature does not cease, but she continues to set an example of diligence to the rest of the community.—If by any accident, before the other females are hatched, the queen mother perishes, the neuters cease their labours, lose their instincts, and die.

The number of females in a populous vespiary is considerable, amounting to several hundred; they emerge from the pupa about the latter end of August, at the same time with the males, and fly in September and October, when they pair. Of this large number of females, very few survive the winter. Those that are so fortunate remain torpid till the vernal sun recalls them to life and action. They then fly forth, collect provision for their young brood, and are engaged in the other labours necessary for laying the foundation of their empire: but in the summer months they are never seen out of the nest.

The male wasps are much smaller than the female, but they weigh as much as two workers. Their antennæ are longer than those of either, not, like theirs, thicker at the end, but perfectly filiform; and their abdomen is distinguished by an additional segment. Their numbers about equal those of the females, and they are produced at the same time. They are not so wholly given to pleasure and idleness as the drones of the hive. They do not, indeed, assist in building the nest, and in the care of the young brood; but they are the scavengers of the community; for they sweep the passages and streets, and carry off all the filth. They also remove the bodies of the dead, which are sometimes heavy burthens for them; in which case two unite their strength to accomplish the work; or, if a partner be not at hand, the wasp thus employed cuts off the head of the defunct, and so effects its purpose. As they make themselves so useful, they are not, like the male bees, devoted by the workers to an universal massacre when the impregnation of the females, the great end of their creation, is answered; but they share the general lot of the community, and are suffered to survive till the cold cuts off them and the workers together.

The workers are the most numerous, and to us the only troublesome part of the community; upon whom devolves the main business of the nest. In the summer and autumnal months, they go forth by myriads into the neighbouring country to collect provisions; and on their return to the common den, after reserving a sufficiency for the nutriment of the young brood, they divide the spoil with great impartiality;—part being given to the females, part to the males, and part to those workers that have been engaged in extending and fortifying the vespiary. This division is voluntarily made, without the slightest symptom of compulsion. Several wasps assemble round each of the returning workers, and receive their respective portions. It is curious and interesting to observe their motions upon this occasion. As soon as a wasp, that has been filling itself with the juice of fruits, arrives at the nest, it perches upon the top, and disgorging a drop of its saccharine fluid, is attended sometimes by two at once, who share the treasure: this being thus distributed, a second and sometimes a third drop is produced, which falls to the lot of others.

Another principal employment of the workers is the enlarging and repairing of the nest. It is extremely amusing to see them engaged upon this foliaceous covering. They work with great celerity; and though a large number are occupied at the same time, there is not the least confusion. Each individual has its portion of work assigned to it, extending from an inch to an inch and a half, and is furnished with a ball of ligneous fibre, scraped or rather plucked by its powerful jaws from posts, rails, and the like. This is carried in its mouth, and is thus ready for immediate use:—but upon this subject I have enlarged in a former letter[116]. The workers also clean the cells and prepare them to receive another egg, after the imago is disclosed and has left it.

There is good reason for thinking, and the opinion has the sanction of Sir Joseph Banks, that wasps have sentinels placed at the entrances of their nests, which if you can once seize and destroy, the remainder will not attack you. This is confirmed by an observation of Mr. Knight's in the Philosophical Transactions[117], that if a nest of wasps be approached without alarming the inhabitants, and all communication be suddenly cut off between those out of the nest and those within it, no provocation will induce the former to defend it and themselves. But if one escapes 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. He discovered this when quite a boy.

It sometimes happens, that when a large number of female wasps have been observed in the spring, and an abundance of workers has in consequence been expected to make their attack upon us in the summer and autumn, but few have appeared. Mr. Knight observed this in 1806, and supposes it to be caused by a failure of males[118]. I have since more than once made the same observation, and Major Moor, as well as myself, noticed in the year 1815. What took place here in the following year may in some degree account for it. Though the summer had been very wet, and one may almost say winterly, there were in the neighbourhood in which I reside abundance of wasps at the usual time; but, except on some few warm days, in which they were very active, benumbed by the cold they were crawling about upon the floors of my house and seemed unable to fly. In this vicinity numbers make their nests in the banks of the river. In the beginning of the month of October there was a very considerable inundation, after which not a single wasp was to be seen. The continued wet that produces an inundation may also destroy those nests that are out of the reach of the waters;—and perhaps this cause may have operated in those years above alluded to, in which the appearance of the workers in the summer and autumn did not correspond with the large numbers of females observed in the spring.

In ordinary seasons, in the month lately mentioned, October, wasps seem to become less savage and sanguinary; for even flies, of which earlier in the summer they are the pitiless destroyers, may be seen to enter their nests with impunity. It is then, probably, that they begin to be first affected by the approach of the cold season, when nature teaches them it is useless longer to attend to their young. They themselves all perish, except a few of the females, upon the first attack of frost.