The True Bees 



These bees resemble bumblebees so closely that it is difficult to 

 distinguish between them and they live apparently in perfect 

 harmony with bumblebees, but are lazy and use the food of the 

 industrious bumblebees, both when adult and when in the larval 

 condition. Bumblebees resent the introduction of one of these 

 guest bees into their nest, but the intruder seems to have very 

 pleasant manners for the alarm and resentment occasioned by his 

 or her presence soon dies away and an amicable relationship 

 succeeds. Whether the guest bee and its larvae consume so 

 much food (they undoubtedly bring in some themselves) that 

 they endanger the health of the colony of bumblebees is a dis- 

 puted point. The old idea was that they ate so much that the 

 young bumblebees were starved to death, and it was upon this 

 supposition that the writer in his youth wrote the following lines 

 which perhaps will be accepted rather on account of their apt- 

 ness to the present topic than on account of their rhythmical 

 merit: 



Oh ! an Apathus sat on a Chrysanthemum 

 A-cleaning her antennae, 



And she little thought of the Pyrethrum 

 That would take her life away ! 



And there she sat, a-taking a rest, 



And smiled in a satisfied way, 

 For she'd laid ten eggs in a Bombus nest 



And there'd soon be the de'il to pay. 



For her offspring dear, her very first brood, 



Would hatch in a very short time, 

 And no trouble she'd have a storing up food, 



For she worked on the Cuckoo line. 



Her young would hatch ere the young bumblebees, 

 And the young bumblebees would die. 



When the young Apathi would live at their ease 

 And fatten like pigs in a sty ! 



So she sat in the sun, this wicked old bee, 



And scratched her tibiae. 

 And chuckled inside in lazy glee 



At the business she'd done that day. 



But the Chrysanthemum on which she sat 



Belonged to a neat old maid. 

 Whose plants were her pride (next to her cat), 



And that day she was out on a raid 

 i6 



