Bees, Wasps and Hornets.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 14, 3 April 1902, Page 29

Bees, Wasps and Hornets.

The common wasp as a rule keeps its sting for self-defence (says an English paper). It will bite a fly in two with its jaws if it gets in its way on a window-pane, but it does not use its sting e\en when trying to rob a bee-hive and ' tackled ' by 1 lie bees. The latter will push a wasp away live or six times, hustling it off the footboard, without provoking it to sting. But if a bee endeavors to sting a wasp it then grapples with it and stings back, killing or benumbing the insect almost at once. British wasps are fussy and excitable but not \icious, like many of the Indian wild beos\ However crowded or uncomfortable they may be, they a cry rarely quairel with or sting each other, as, for instance, when a number are on the same window-pane, fretting and anxious to get out Only when the entrance to their nest is threatened do they become actively agiessi\e, and then as a rule the attack is not begun till the person who excites their feai interposes between them and the entrance to Ihc nest A setter dog was noticed to turn and bite itself, whimpering with pain, just as the party was sitting down to a shooting luncheon by the side of a wood in Yorkshire The dog being tired, had lain down on the hole of a wasps' nest, and Jim» or six of the \ellow insects \\ eie stinging it at once but they did not touch the persons sitting close l>.\ Bees are far 11101 c free m the use of their stilngs than wasps, and ofi en go out on an i:\pedition of the nioM criminal kind, as fully iniendmg to use their deadly weapon as was the late Mi. Chailes I'eace when he went a-burt'ling with a re\ol\er 10\ei.v now and\heu a swai in makes up its mind to burgle another hi\e and steal the hone.\ Kobbei.v t ind beeslaughter, if not minder in the lirst degiee. ai c their object They sting the 1 aided swaun, and the latter sting the l.urleis, ,\m\ when this h.is been going on e\oi\ bee ne.u the place is kmilv to ' shoot at sight..' so to speak, and sling persons passing b\ Besides this, bees ha \ c lads ami fancies about people whom the\ like and dislike The\ will sting the latter (mi,te nn|iro\ oked Uoi nets, w hit h ai c oul\ l.ii l'c wasps, aie \ery difieienL I'ioiu the latter in temperament, and tar less actnc This is matter foi thankfulness, for the amount of poison emitted by a hornet is enough to cause most sei ions results The pain is intense. The wi lter has seen a ho\ stung on the head taint at once from the shock. The results to some constitutions aie so serious that the dread in winch hornets aie held is by no means unwarranted But the\ aie among the most sluggish of winged insects They will sit for houis on a d\ ing elm tiee, apparently almost torpid, drinking the sweet sap, and if by chance one enteis a house it will lemain (|inetl.\ on the window-pane, without any ot the bir/7ing and fuss made b> a bee or a wasp.