5 JULY 1945, Page 16

More Hornets A beekeeper who has a certain number of

unoccupied hives has just found in one of them, for the second time this season, a hornets' nest in its early stages. The nest is a beautiful structure. Above a group of some twenty inverted cells, each as perfectly constructed in paper as a hive bee's in wax, is a circular cupola of yellow papei, and the whole is suspended by a tough but singularly slender bar. The queen hornet was at work when the second nest was discovered, and at once flew away ; but the patient bee-keeper awaited her return and presently played the successful assassin. I imagine that the queen must have escaped when the first nest was discovered—at a most unusually early date. Hornets are, I think, quite definitely on the increase.