Wasps and Hornets It is a very waspish year. Even
apples on the tree—at any rate on one F.11ison's Orange—have been reduced to the state of Chinese lanterns. One of my beehives was attacked by a commando of wasps, but they were repelled by a very strong swarm that supplied a good quantum of honey early in the year. There arc worse insects than wasps, which, after all, destroy both blight and horseflies. In Denmark I saw no wasps, but several very active communities of hornets, safely housed in hollow trees. The hornet is, I think, becoming more common in England. In my immediate neighbourhood last year two hornets' nests (very beauti- fully constructed) were started in an empty beehive. As to the hive bees, I have received corroboration from several counties that the year's honey is unusually dark, and that honey-dew on the oak leaves has been the principal cause.
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