Scarcity of Wasps

Abstract

THE scarcity of wasps in Cheshire during the passing autumn, noted in NATURE of October 12 by Mr. H. V. Davis, has been equally remarkable in this district (Wigtownshire). Observation extending over very many seasons has convinced me that the abundance of queen wasps in spring is no indication of the number of swarms in late summer and autumn. That appears to be regulated by the character of the weather in June and July, which this year was unusually cold and wet. In the autumn of 1915 there was an extraordinary number of the nests of social wasps, both of the species that build underground and those that found arboreal colonies. In consequence I do not remember ever to have seen so many queen wasps about as there were in May of this year. Presumably each of these started building cells and laying eggs, but even if these hatched out, the cold was fatal to the larvæ (for wasps are essentially lovers of sunshine); no workers were reared to assist in forming the colony, which consequently came to naught. Last year I would have undertaken to find fifty wasps' nests within a radius of half a mile of this house; this year I did not know of one.