SOLITARY AND SOCIAL BEES 



the same season. Bols showed that in Belgium certain banks 

 may be much favoured by the young queens, several dozen 

 digging holes near one another. These hibernation-holes are 

 of about the diameter of a cigar and three inches long. Not 

 all queens use such sites, and some may be found hiding in 

 moss or dead leaves in woods or hedgerows. 



Apart from the dead vegetable matter which insulates 

 the nest and helps to protect it from the damp, the cells are 

 constructed of wax, a very characteristic product of social 

 bees. In the humble bee it appears as thin plates protruding 

 between the overlapping segments of the abdomen both above 

 and beneath. The wax plates are removed by a stiff brush on 

 the hind legs, and can be worked up by the jaws. All insects 

 produce at least minute quantities of a wax which serves to 

 make their outer skeleton waterproof. Several kinds, such 

 as scale insects or woolly aphids, produce much wax which 

 seems to serve as a partial protection from their enemies. 

 Only social bees y however, " handle " the wax which they 

 produce. 



The humble bee does not construct regular combs of 

 hexagonal cells like the wasp or honey bee, and the nest 

 grows rather piecemeal. This makes its arrangement difficult 

 to understand without careful study. The first step of the 

 queen is to make a small cavity in the centre of the ball of 

 grass, and here she lies for considerable periods while wax is 

 being secreted. As in the honey bee, the production of wax 

 entails the eating of a good deal of nectar. The first wax is 

 used to make a small honey-pot which stands near the entrance 

 to the nest. This when filled provides a food supply during 

 bad weather. The next step is to make a small ball of pollen, 

 moistened with honey. On top of this a small waxen egg- 

 cell is built. In some species the egg-cell is built first and the 

 pollen collected afterwards. The first cell contains six to ten 



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