Abstract
THE past summer has been so remarkable as regards these insects that a few notes from an old observer may be acceptable. The principal fact to be noticed is the extraordinary disproportion between the immense number of queens in spring (I cannot remember so many in upwards of fifty years' observations) and the scarcity of workers in the summer. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that there were more queens to be seen in the spring than workers when these were most numerous, in September. To go back to the beginning, an entry in my diary on October 18, 1915, states that on digging out a nest poisoned with cyanide two days previously, in which all the active workers had been killed, â“œa lot of quite lively ones, mostly queens,â” was found.
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WALKER, A. Scarcity of Wasps. Nature 98, 148–149 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/098148d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/098148d0
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