THE EVOLUTION OF THE BEE AND THE BEEHIVE 



laid. This bee is common in America as well as in Great 

 Britain. 



Here we have a bee that has not developed the typical 

 hairs of a honey-bee, that collects little or no pollen, that 

 stores the cells in which eggs are laid with thin honey, which 

 it brings straight from flowers and does not first deposit in 

 honey cells — a bee that produces separate and distinct cells, 

 which may or may not be in contact. 



A little higher up in the scale of progress we find another 



Fig. 11. — Nests of a solitary bee, tunneled in the ground. 

 a, cell provisioned and supplied with an tgg\ h, cell with 

 young larva; c, cell with older larva. (After Valery Mayet.) 



group of bees, which burrow tunnels in sandy soil, some of 

 them nearly a foot in length. The tunnels and the cells are 

 lined with a paper-like material, and the cells are divided by 

 partitions, which may or may_ not be in .contact. These cells 

 are furnished with a fluid mixture of pollen and honey, both 

 of which have been swallowed by the mother bee. All this 

 shows an advance over the work of the bee first described, 

 inasmuch as pollen forms a conspicuous part of the food of 

 the larvae and there is a common entrance through a tunnel 

 to the cells (Fig. 11). The nourishing fluid is more liquid 

 than that supplied by the higher bees, and the papery lining 



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