BEHAVIOR OF A PARASITIC BEE 377 



would cause the bee to begin to feed. On one occasion, I carried 

 a bee that was thus perched upon my finger a part of the way 

 around the room and back to the cage without disturbing its 

 feeding movements. The bees reacted towards my fingers 

 just as they would have towards sticks or other inanimate 

 objects. This result was not altogether unexpected; for, several 

 years ago, I had a somewhat similar experience with the South 

 Carolina yellow-jacket (Vespa Carolina). These wasps had been 

 raised in the laboratory, from eggs and pupae collected from a 

 wild nest. From the beginning of their imago life, the yellow 

 jackets had been trained to feed on honey placed upon the tip of 

 one of my fingers. After a week had elapsed, whenever I presented 

 my finger to an}^ one of the large so-called queens she would 

 mount that finger and rest quietly thereon. With the tremu- 

 lous wasp thus perched upon my finger, I could move from 

 one room to the next and back without the yellow-jacket either 

 taking flight or making an attempt to sting. In the case of 

 those Vespas the preliminary feeding with honey placed on the 

 finger tips may have been a kind of training for the other be- 

 ha\'ior; but in the case of the parasitic bees described above 

 there had been no preliminary training of any kind. 



MATING HABITS 



While conducting a series of experiments on the reactions 

 of these bees towards light, I had several opportunities to study 

 carefully the method of copulation. In each of the cases ob- 

 served the method was essentially as follows : While the female 

 was resting in the sunlight, upon the netting of that side of 

 the cage through which the direct rays of the sun W'ere entering, 

 the male mounted her back. Grasping the female with its 

 front tw^o pairs of legs, the male curved its abdomen slightly 

 until, with jerky movements, it had succeeded in bringing the 

 genitalia into good contact. Throughout practically the whole 

 period of copulation, which lasted about five minutes, the male 

 patted the sides of the abdomen of the female with his hind legs. 

 In each of the cases observed by me, the female lost her grip 

 on the netting and the pair dropped to the floor of the cage. 

 The male, however, retained his position upon her back. In 

 one of the cases the female remained where she fell until the 

 male departed; in the other cases the female roamed about 



