190 BRITISH BEES. 



stops up the orifice with grains of sand or earth. The 

 food stored up is subject to fermentation, but this does 

 not appear to be prejudicial to the larva, which first con- 

 sumes the liquid portion of the store and then drills 

 into the centre of the more solid part, and continues 

 enlarging this little cylinder until increasing in growth 

 by its consumption, it itself fills the cavity, and thus 

 supplies the lateral stay or prop which, by means of the 

 stored provender, was previously prevented from falling 

 in. It has not been ascertained what number of eggs 

 each insect lays, or whether it bores more than one 

 tube, but it is presumable that it may do so, and pos- 

 sibly thus, from the numbers annually produced, for 

 there are two broods in the year, colonies are thrown oft' 

 which gradually form another metropolis somewhere in 

 the vicinity, although the majority continue to occupy 

 the old habitat from year to year. But the number of 

 these insects is kept within due limits by the individual 

 abundance of the parasites that infest them, and by the 

 unsparing and unflinching attacks of earwigs, which con- 

 sume all before them, perfect insect, larva, and pro- 

 vender. The two most conspicuous parasites they have, 

 are the beautiful little bee, Epeolus variegatus, the young 

 ,of which is sustained, as in all bee parasitism, by con- 

 suming the food stored for the sustenance of the young 

 of the Colletes ; and the other is the little dipterous 

 Miltogramma punctata, whose larva, evolved from the 

 egg deposited in the cell, feeds upon the larva of the 

 Colletes, or possibly upon that of the Epeolus, which 

 otherwise would seem to have no check to its fertility, 

 excepting that it may be subdued by the Forficulce. 



These insects are to be found during the spring and 

 summer months, and throughout the southern counties, 





