248 TRANS. ST, LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



and D. eximia, both cultivated and in the wild state. Corydalis 

 aurea and C. glauca are found in a similar condition, and Prof. 

 Trelease (112) has found large numbers of the flowers of Impa- 

 tiensfulva perforated, while W. E. Stone (107) states that almost 

 every individual of Gerardia integrifoUa which he had occasion 

 to examine was perforated by some insect. Prof. W. W. Bailey 

 (3 & 4) also finds G. pedicularia similarly injured. 



In the summer of 1S83, in the vicinity of La Crosse, Wis., I 

 noticed large numbers of honey-bees on the flowers of Red Clo- 

 ver, and wondered whether they made perforations, or what they 

 were doing. In some cases they obtained pollen, but in a vast 

 majority of cases nectar was collected through perforations made 

 by some other insect. Among bee-keepers there is a notion that 

 the Italian bee is able to get nectar from Red Clover. I doubt 

 whether this is true, for in my experience I never found them 

 collecting nectar in the normal way ; they seemed to collect only 

 through perforations made by some other insect. One thing will 

 show, in part at least, why honey-bees go to the Red Clover at 

 certain times and not on other occasions. It is a well known fact 

 that the amount of nectar secreted by a plant varies according to 

 season and locality. There are periods, as I have had occasion 

 repeatedly to observe, when hive-bees cannot collect enough to 

 supply their young, and they then freely use the perforations 

 made by Bonibus and other insects ; but when there is an abun- 

 dance of nectar they pass over fields of Red Clover, and when 

 Monarda punctata is in flower, and has a good supply of nectar, 

 they will even pass over fields of White Clover and fly some dis- 

 tance to fields of wild Bergamot. 



Although the rule seems to be that honey-bees do not perforate 

 flowers, there seem to be exceptions, for no less an authority than 

 Hermann Mi^iller states that they perforate the flowers of Erica 

 tetralix (82 d')^ using their mandibles to bite holes in the tube of 

 the corolla. The tongue of the honey-bee is only 6 mm. long, 

 so that it is not able to get the nectar otherwise in these early 

 flowers. Later he found honey-bees collecting nectar in the nor- 

 mal way, but he failed to observe whether these late flowers were 

 smaller or not. He has recorded one other case, that of Nepeta 

 Glechoma (82 c'), where Apis perforates the tube of the corolla in 

 order to get nectar. On the 17th of May, 1873, he found a single 



