man's chief competitors, the insects 59 



hatch from the egg as active long legged larvae which, lurking 

 in flowers, attach themselves to the hairs of solitary bees. 

 When the cell is finished and the egg is laid on the store of 

 honey the larva drops off and consumes the egg. It then 

 casts its skin and a grub-like creature appears which devours 

 the honey, changing its form and becoming more grub-like after 

 each succeeding moult. After a false, followed by a true, pupal 

 stage the adult beetle emerges. Carpenter bees and many 

 other sohtary bees are the victims of these beetles; some live 

 in wasps' nests eating the grubs, and one feeds on the eggs 

 of the rocky mountain locust. The hive-beetles are parasites of 

 a somewhat different type, and there are still other beetles para- 

 sitic on the bees and wasps. But although very many beetles 

 are during their whole lives predaceous, very few are parasitic. 

 The habits of the cuckoo-bees have already been described; 

 then there are the burglar-bees that lay their eggs in cells 

 constructed by the solitary bees. The curious Stylops and its 

 alHes are parasites that live mostly in bees and wasps. Strange 

 minute wingless flies called bee-Hce infest the honey-bees, 

 while mites are very common. Some bees are so obliging as 

 to have a special cavity in which their mites exist. 



There are no parasites among the butterflies, and I know 

 of only one among the moths. The larva of this species lives 

 within the caterpillar of a large wood-boring species in Aus- 

 tralia feeding on the fatty tissues. 



It is in the wasp tribe that we find the most curious and 

 interesting of the insect parasites. Though some are vege- 

 tarians, most of the small wasps called chalcid flies are para- 

 sites in insect eggs, in the bodies of moth caterpillars, or in 

 the grubs of gall wasps, mason bees, etc.; many are parasites 

 on other parasites of these. All of the pelecinid and procto- 

 tr>^id wasps are parasites in other insects or in insect eggs; 

 some of the latter will swim down under water with their 

 wings to lay their eggs in the eggs of water insects. Some of 

 the gall wasps are parasitic in the young of flies or saw-flies, or 

 of other parasitic wasps; others breed in galls made by other 



