HARDWIGKE'S SOIENCE-GO SSIP. 



49 



A FEW WORDS ABOUT BEES. 



HEN pious old 

 Dr. Isaac Watts 

 wrote the line? 

 with which we 

 are all familiar, 

 he probably knew 

 very little about 

 these wonderful 

 insects, or he 

 would hardly have called the 

 honeybee " little": it should 

 have been the medium-sized 

 bee. But he is not the only 

 one who has sadly neglected 

 them. Even amongst ento- 

 mologists they are very much 

 ignored for the more favoured 

 Coleoptera and Lepidoptera. 

 If they are more difficult to 

 collect and preserve than 

 those insects, they well repay 

 the extra trouble, the instinct displayed by some, 

 verging close upon reason, if it be not an inferior 

 order of that power. In the hope that some 

 of your readers may be induced to study them, 

 I have written this short account ; meagre 

 indeed it is, since a whole number of this journal 

 would not contain what might be said of one 

 species alone, the Hive-bee. When I have shown 

 my collection to friends, the general exclamation has 

 been, " What, are those bees ? " Nor is this at all 

 surprising ; if the reader, supposing he has never 

 seen a collection of bees, or read one of our three 

 published works upon them, will only run over in 

 his mind the bees he can recollect to have seen. 

 There will be the Yellow-barred bumble, the Red- 

 tailed bumble, and perhaps the black one, the 

 Leaf-cutter, the Mason-bee, and the Hive-bee, 

 perhaps the Carder-bee, and possibly another or 

 two. But few persons have any idea that we have 

 in these islands about two hundred and twenty 

 species, and that they vary in size from one and a 

 half to about fourteen lines in length (I need hardly 

 No. 123. 



say a line is the twelfth part of an inch). Some are 

 almost entirely destitute of pubescence, while 

 others, as the Bumble-bees, are densely covered* 

 The colour of their outer shell or case is generally a 

 blackish brown, though sometimes quite a blue 

 black; several are bronzy, while some are beautifully 

 variegated with red, yellow, or white. Of course I 

 am alluding to British species only. 



It is exclusively the female and neuter that collect 

 the honey and pollen for the subsistence of the 

 future young. The males do nothing but make 

 themselves as happy as the sunshine will allow them, 

 though no doubt, in sporting about from flower to 

 flower, they are unconsciously making themselves 

 useful by assisting nature in the distribution of 

 pollen. This is collected in various ways. Some of 

 them carry it on the shank of the hinder leg, some 

 on the whole leg, which is densely covered with long 

 hairs for the purpose. 



One large genus (J/idrena) has a curled lock of 

 hair at the base of the hind leg, beneath it; the back 

 part of the thorax or middle portion of the body is 

 generally more or less covered with longer or shorter 

 pubescence, sometimes curled; and some (the 

 Social Bumble and Hive bees) collect into a basket 

 as it is called, formed by an expanded joint of the 

 hind leg (tibia), round which is placed a row of 

 stiff setae, curved slightly inwards, and standing at 

 nearly right angles to the outer surface of the leg. 

 The hind legs of all those constructive bees which 

 gather pollen on the leg are considerably thickened- 

 Another group collect on the belly, the plates of 

 which are densely covered with stiff hairs for the 

 purpose. The Leaf-cutters and Masons (Megachile 

 aud Osmia) are the principal ones of this division. 

 There is another large group of six genera, that 

 have no special provision for carrying nollen; and 

 they need none, because they do not collect any: 

 they were named by the Rev. W. Kirby " Cuckoo 

 bees " from the resemblance their habits bear to 

 those of that bird ; but more of them anon. 



The males in all [ are harmless insects, though 

 some of them look far from it with their large forci- 



D 



