io4 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [March, '13 



The Origin of the Oligotropic Habit among Bees 



(Hymen.). 



By JOHN H. LOVELL, Waldoboro, Maine. 



In the December, 1912, number of ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS, 

 Mr. Charles Robertson offers a number of criticisms on my 

 treatment of oligotropic bees in the Popular Science Monthly 

 for August, 1912. It should be premised that the paper was 

 a popular presentation of the subject, from which unnecessary 

 technicalities were omitted. In one or two instances Mr. Rob- 

 ertson gives the obvious meaning of the writer and then sug- 

 gests an alternative view, from which he proceeds to differ; 

 there would appear to be an evident desire to provide material 

 for criticism. There was no intention on the writer's part of 

 attributing the definitions of oligotropic and polytropic bees, 

 which were given in the modified forms suggested by Mr. 

 Robertson in 1899, to Dr. Loew. For the benefit of those not 

 familiar with the literal meaning of these words it was stated 

 that they signified adapted to few or to many flowers and orig- 

 inated with or were proposed by Loew. 



Mr. Robertson says that Epeolus is a genus of inquilines. 

 Formerly he asserted the contrary. In the Bot. Gaz., 28 135, 

 he said: "I have never believed that our species of Epeolus 

 were cuckoos of Colletes, because there are more common 

 species of the former than of the latter genus, and their pheno- 

 logical positions do not show the correlations which exist be- 

 tween Andrena and Nomada, Megachile and Coelioxys. Be- 

 sides the maximum of Epeolus does not approximate that of 

 any other genus of bees on which it might be supposed to be 

 inquiline. Then they are more abundant than would be ex- 

 pected of inquiline bees. Mr. Ashmead's observations confirm- 

 ed my views, and I have never doubted their correctness since 

 I first read an account of them. In Psyche for March, 1894, 

 p. 41, he states that he found E. donatits making nests in the 

 ground and provisioning them with honey paste. Epeolus 

 thus comes under the same category as Prosopis and is treated 

 the same way in the table." Mr. Robertson is here positive 



