IT is undeniable that the bee occupies a far higher position in the regard of man than the wasp. The bee is held up as an example to the young for its strict attention to business, its forethought and prudence. It has been made the object of much study; its habits and manners have been watched in hives specially constructed; and the behaviour of the bees towards their queen and towards each other has been as minutely investigated and described, and is, indeed, almost as well known, as are the customs of the ancient Greeks or Romans. The wasp, on the other hand, is regarded with absolute hostility. It is viewed as an idler, as an irritable and hot-tempered creature, with no fixed aims and ends, prone to unprovoked assaults, a disturber of picnics, an intruder in the domestic circle—a creature, in fact, to be promptly and summarily put to death if opportunity offer itself. This hasty and unjust conclusion is, in fact, the result of man’s natural selfishness. He does not really admire the bee because the insect stores up food for its winter use, but because he is able to plunder that store, and to make it available for his own purposes. The squirrel, the field-mouse, and many other creatures lay up stores for winter; but, as man is not particularly fond of dried nuts or shrivelled grain, he does not consider it necessary to profess any extreme admiration for the forethought of these creatures. The wasp is perfectly capable of storing up honey for its winter use, did it see the slightest occasion for doing so; but the wasp is not a fool. It knows perfectly well that its life is a short one; that it will die when the winter season approaches. Its instinct doubtless teaches it that only a few of the autumn-born females will survive to create new colonies in the spring, and that as these females will pass the winter in a dormant state in some snug recess beyond the reach of frost, there is no occasion whatever to prepare stores of food for their use. Did the wasp endeavour to emulate the bee, and store its cells with honey, it would rightly be held up to derision as an idiot, as the only creature who imitates the folly of man in continuing to work until the last to pile up riches for others to enjoy after its death. If it is admirable for the bee, who lives through the winter, to collect for his use during that time, it is no less admirable in the wasp, who dies before the winter, to avoid the absurd and ridiculous habit of collecting stores which he cannot profit by.

In all other respects the wasp is the equal, if not the superior, of the bee. The latter is content to establish its home in any place that comes to hand. Even if man provides a hive for it, the bee has not the sense to utilise it until man takes the trouble to bring the habitation and to shake the swarm into it. If the hive should not be forthcoming the bees will establish themselves in a hollow tree, in a chimney, in the roof of a house, or in any other place that appears convenient, and then and there begin to build their combs and prepare for the reception of brood and honey. The wasp, on the other hand, more industriously sets to work to build its own house, walls and all, and the labour required for such an undertaking is enormous. Wood, the material it uses, is obtained by gnawing posts, gates, rails, or other timber that has lost its sap. This is chewed up by the wasp’s strong jaws into a paste, and spread out with its tongue in layers finer than tissue paper. Layer after layer is spread, until the house, which varies in size from that of an apple to one as large as a man’s head, is made rain- and weather-tight, a model of symmetry, and a marvellous example of the result of patient and persevering labour, a white palace, by the side of which anything the bee can do is but poor workmanship. The arrangement inside the structure is at least equal to that which the bee can accomplish in the most perfectly-constructed hive. The cells are as regular and as carefully arranged, and it is kept with the same scrupulous care and cleanliness. It is not necessary for the wasp to collect honey and pollen for the use of its brood, for these are fed upon insects, the juicy caterpillar and the plump body of the blue-bottle being the morsels which they mostly affect. In the capture of its prey for the use of its young, the wasp works as assiduously as does the owl to gather in field mice for the sustenance of its offspring; and each capture, after being carried to the nest, is stowed away in the cell with the egg, until it is full, and then the entrance securely sealed.

The queen wasp is, in point of activity, energy, and intelligence, far ahead of the queen bee. As soon as the latter leaves her cell a perfect insect, she is waited upon by a crowd of workers, who provide her with food, attend her every movement, and forestall her every wish, and her functions are confined solely to the laying of her eggs. The queen wasp, on the contrary, is the founder as well as the mother of her colony. When she wakes up from her lethargy in the spring, she sallies out to find a suitable spot for her future kingdom. Having fixed upon it, she proceeds to build her cells unaided. She has to feed herself while engaged on this labour, and when a certain number of cells are completed she has then to store them with food sufficient to support the grubs, until, their second stage completed, they are ready to issue out and to take their share in the work. Even when she has an army of children, she continues to set them an example of labour and perseverance, supervising the operations and working diligently and continuously herself. She is the life and soul of her community, and if by any accident she dies before the other females, which are hatched late in the season, appear, the community is entirely disorganised, the neuters cease from their labours, and the whole colony perishes. Nature, too, has done much more for the bee than for the wasp, for the former naturally secretes the wax from which it forms its cells, while the wasp has no such faculty, and has to construct its cells as well as its house from the paper it manufactures.

The wasp is as fond of sweets as is the bee, and while a portion of the community are engaged upon the work of collecting materials, manufacturing paper, and building, the others collect sweets from flowers or fruit. Having filled themselves with these, they return home, and on entering the hive mount to the upper cells, and there disgorge the contents of their honey bag for the benefit of the workers. The bee is industrious, it may be admitted, but it is industrious in a quiet and methodical way. There is no hurry about the bee, and any one who watches it at work will be inclined to admit that it does a good deal of pottering about. The wasp has no time for this sort of thing; it knows how much there is to be done, and that there is not a single moment to be wasted. The queen is laying her eggs; there are the materials for the houses to be collected, ground up into paste, and spread; there is food for the grubs to be gathered, and supplies for the builders to be brought in. The work has got to be done, and there is no time to be fooling about. There is, then, no reason whatever for surprise, and still less for blame, that when the wasp is interrupted in its work it loses its temper at once. It is angry when, having entered at an open window, and gathered from a jam-pot, a dish, or a jug—for the wasp is not particular—a supply of food, it finds that its way back to its hungry friends is barred by a strange smooth obstacle, through which it cannot pass. Many men know to their cost how small a thing rouses the temper of a woman engaged in the arduous operations of washing or cooking, and are careful in avoiding the neighbourhood of the wash-house or kitchen upon such occasions; and yet they make no allowance whatever for similar irritation on the part of the busy wasp! Again, blame is imputed to the wasp because it waxes wroth if it be flapped at with a handkerchief or hat; but surely there is nothing surprising in this? Men take offence at practical jokes, especially practical jokes of a dangerous kind; and the wasp naturally regards these wanton attacks upon it, when actively engaged in the business of the community, as dangerous impertinences, and is not to be blamed for resenting them. The more one examines into the habits of the bee and the wasp respectively, the more one is convinced that the high esteem in which the former is held by man is simply the result of man’s love for honey; and that the balance of superiority is wholly upon the side of the wasp, who is a more energetic, a more vivacious, a more industrious, and a more intelligent insect than the bee, and should on all these accounts occupy a far higher place in man’s esteem and regard than it possesses at present.