Jacobus van der Vecht (5 July 1906 – 15 March 1992), nicknamed Jaap, was a Dutch entomologist who specialised in Hymenoptera, especially those of the East Indies and New Guinea.
Early life Van der Vecht was born in The Hague on 5 July 1906. His father, the Master of the Wine Cellars at the court of the then Queen Dowager of the Netherlands, Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, had an interest in natural history and reared butterflies as a hobby. He enjoyed taking his sons on walks to study nature and this encouraged a passion for biology in Jacobus. Van der Vecht left school in The Hague and enrolled to study biology at the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. Here he began to study the Aculeate Hymenoptera especially the taxonomy of bees, concentrating on the large mining bee genus Andrena and the wasps in the family Sphecidae. He graduated with a master's degree in 1928.
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