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mainly on insects, many of which are themselves injurious. However,
after mid-summer their diet becomes more vegetarian and the
workers feed on ripening fruit and other sweet substances, thus
effecting serious damage in orchards, sugar warehouses, grain
factories, etc., where they cause considerable wastage of goods. In
houses they become a nuisance during cooking and at meal times
and it is conceivable that they are instrumental in the spread of
food poisoning.
The queen wasp, the only survivor from the previous year's
colony, emerges from hibernation in the spring to choose a site for
nesting, usually in cavity walls, lofts, under roof tiles or other sites
which evoke a certain ingenuity on the part of the disinfestors in
order satisfactorily to deal with the nuisance.
Sixty-five complaints regarding this pest were received and
during the year some 38 nests were destroyed, mainly by means of
Gammexane powder or Dieldrin Concentrate.