Country diary 1922: The queen wasp must be tough

Queen wasps, the females on whom the future of the wasp race depends, are seeking hibernacula; their lazy mates, their busy half-sexless helpers, their brothers and sisters are dead, or have but few days to live, for the ordinary wasp is a delicate creature. One of these queens entered a house in Blackpool on Thursday evening, and from its size, for the queen is a big insect, puzzled its captor, who, after “killing” it with cyanide, forwarded it to me for identification. When it reached me on Saturday morning it still had enough life left to move its legs and pulsate its abdomen.

The worker wasp succumbs quickly in the killing bottle, is susceptible to frost, and, indeed, has less tenacity of life than many insects; the individual worker is of small importance to the species, or to what Maeterlinck in the bee calls the “spirit of the hive.” But with the queen it is different; she must be tough, for in her deathlike winter sleep dangers surround her, and if she fails to survive until spring very many potential individuals perish with her; the wasp race suffers.

So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.