200 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
pot, lowered her head into it, and then drew her abdomen far in, thus 
forcing the honey from her mouth. If pollen-laden, the bee balanced 
herself, with her middle and cephalic pairs of legs, on the edge of a pol- 
"len-pot, head outward, spread her wings, and then scraped the pollen- 
masses from her corbiculae by rubbing the posterior legs together. 
The mode of feeding the larvse is as follows. One of the smaller work- 
ers, which may be called a nurse-bee, goes to a honey-pot, from which she 
presumably draws a small amount of honey, and proceeds next to a pollen- 
pot. She remains here, with her head in the pot, undoubtedly preparing 
a mixture of pollen and honey, for ordinarily about ten minutes. Then 
going to one of the larvae, which lie in circular form in their chambers, 
she injects into the cell, through a small opening previously made, usu- 
ally by another worker, a brownish fluid of the consistency of honey. 
This is greedily eaten by the larva. Whether the larvae of both females 
and workers are fed in the same manner and with the same mixture could 
not be decided. But, from the analogous case of the honey-bee, it is to be 
expected that the kind of food does influence the size and function of the 
bee. The males, it may be added, are commonly supposed to have come 
from eggs laid by the sterile females (workers). 
In eairiy August females (queens) and males began to emerge. Both left 
the nest within a few days, and did not return, nor were they seen to cop- 
ulate. 
In the first chilly afternoon of autumn the workers become stiffened with 
cold, and do not return ; and after a few freezing days the old queen, too, 
succumbs. The males also perish, and only the young queens survive the 
winter. 
The bees were greatly troubled with inquilines. In the grass covering 
of the nest there were always present the larva of a small moth, a small 
beetle, in its various stages, and frequently cockroaches. Within the wax 
lining a minute insect was frequently seen.* The larvae of the bees were, 
too, sometimes killed by what was probably a fungus of the genus Ento- 
mophthora. These dead larvae were always carried out by the bees and 
dropped. 
The bees were very cleanly in their habits. Their faeces, for example, 
were always deposited in a particular place outside the nest, in a corner of 
the box. The bee approached the spot, turned about so as to face away 
from it, then backed still nearer, and forciby ejected the faeces. 
II. 
THE TRUE RELATIONSHIP OF THE SO-CALLED APATHUS ELATUS. 
When the colony of bees on which most of the preceding observations 
were made was captured, the species was supposed to be Bombus fervidus; 
and as it is of this species that Apatkus elatus is supposed to be an inqui- 
* None of these inquilines were determined. 
