BEHAVIOR OF A PARASITIC BEE 375 



by which they found the way back to the mud cell was not 

 determined experimentally, partly because the habit was estab- 

 lished before I received the bees and partly because the size 

 of the cage was thought too small for satisfactory experiments 

 of that kind. 



FEEDING HABITS 



The bees were fed on honey deposited either on glazed paper or in 

 Minot watch glasses and placed on the floor of the cage. When 

 the honey was first placed in the cage, there was no special 

 rushing for the food nor were any special hunting movements 

 initiated bv its presence; but, when a bee, either male or female, 

 chanced to come in contact with the honey, it would stop and 

 feed. On the paper, I always dropped a very small amount of 

 honey; in the watch glass, I poured enough to cover about one- 

 half of the bottom. An attempt was made to always place 

 the honey in the center of the watch glass. To feed from the 

 small drop of honey on the paper never caused the bees any 

 trouble; but the larger amount of honey in the watch glass 

 was, at first, a source of much inconvenience. It was amusing 

 to watch a bee feeding from it. While feeding the bee was 

 certain to get one of its feet into the honey. In striving to 

 extricate the leg, the bee would invariably get another foot 

 smeared. This would serve to complicate matters. Sometimes 

 the bee would succeed in backing out, but more often it would wade 

 through the honey to the opposite side of the watch glass. Then 

 it would drag itself along to some good resting place and at- 

 tempt to clean its besmeared body. After a few days, it was 

 noticed that the bees fed from the honey in the watch glass 

 without getting into if; but the number of observations were 

 too few to warrant the assertion that they had profited from 

 experience. This inability to give a definite answer to this 

 question is not due to a failure to attempt to secure evidence, but 

 to the fact that the bees fed only occasionally and at uncertain 

 intervals. 



After sipping honey for a short while, unless too much smeared 

 with honey to fly, the bee would ascend on its wings, to about 

 an inch, or a little less, above the surface of the honey and 

 describe several horizontal circles, the diameters of which were 

 gradually increasing in length. After this short flight of orien- 

 tation, the bee would fly away; sometimes to the sunny patch 



