CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



the hairs of the under surface of the body. To place this 

 pollen in the cell the bee enters backward and, with the aid 

 of its hind-legs, brushes and scrapes and combs the pollen 

 off from the under surface of its body so that it falls into 

 the cell. This is a distinct advance on what we had at the 

 beginning of our series, where the pollen is swallowed and 

 brought up again. The pollen and honey are, however, not 

 kept separate, but are worked up by the jaws of the bee into 

 a paste, on which the egg is laid, and the cell is then closed 

 with cement. The work of building this cell takes about two 

 days, and after it is finished the bee will begin to make a 

 second cell close to the first, and will continue its work until 

 it has made eight or nine cells, when it places a thick, dome- 

 like layer of mortar over the whole series. The result is a 

 nest about the size of half an orange. The larvae live in 

 these nests for months ; they do not pass through their life- 

 history so rapidly as the honey-bee. 



An equally ingenious insect is the carder bee, which has 

 developed the habit of making nests of wool or cotton, 

 obtained from plants that grow in the neighbourhood. This 

 bee is referred to by Gilbert White in his "Natural History 

 of Selborne." The male, like that of the honey-bee, is con- 

 spicuously larger than the female. These carder bees build 

 their nests in any hollow, such as a cavity in wood or a 

 deserted nest of other bees, or in an empty snail shell. In 

 order to retain in the cell the fluid mixture of pollen and 

 honey they line the cell with a thin cement. A few allied 

 species form their cells of resin instead of wool or cotton. 



The last of the solitary bees we shall consider are the car- 

 penter-bees. These are big, burly black or bluish-black bees. 

 They have powerful jaws, with which they carve their way 

 into dried wood. They avoid living timber, but they will 

 bore a hole into a beam or a rafter, and this hole will lead 



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