354 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF IXSECTS. 



in a day. In collecting honey, hunihlc-bees, if they cannot get at that con- 

 tained in any flower by its natural opening, will often make an aperture at 

 the base of tlie corolla, or evsn in the calyx, that they may insert their 

 proboscis in the very place where nature has stored up her nectar.^ M. 



^ Hub. Nouv. Ohserv. ii. 375. Of tlie especial lovo of humble-bees for the nectar 

 of the Passion-flower (Passiflora ctcnilea), ami the eifect which it has on them, the 

 following paragraph gives a graphic description. 



" We regret extremely to announce tliat some honest humble-bees of our ac- 

 quaintance have taken to drinking, and to sucii excess that they are daily found 

 reeling and tumbling about the door of their houses of call — the blossoms of the 

 Passion-flower, which flow over with intoxicating beverage ; and there, not con- 

 tent with drinking like decent bees, they plunge their great hairy heads into the 

 beautiful goblet that nature has formed in such plants, thrusting each other aside, 

 or climbing over each other's shoulders, till the flowers bend beneath. their weight. 

 After a time the}' become so stupid that it is in vain to pull them by the skirts, and 

 advise them to go home, instead of wasting their time in tippling : they are how- 

 ever, good-natured in their cups, and show no resentment at being disturbed ; on 

 the contrary, they cling to their wine goblet, and crawl back to it as fast as they 

 are pulled away, unless, indeed, they fairly lose their legs and tumble down, in 

 which case they lie sprawling on the ground, quite unable to get up again." 

 (^Gardener's Chronicle, 1841, p. 510.) If this account be not overcoloured. these 

 jovial, reckless proceedings of humble-bees are in strong contrast with the temperate 

 habits of hive-bees, which, to judge from the interesting account Mr. Wailes has 

 given us of their visits to his Passion-flowers (Ent. 3Iag. i. 525.), hurried back to 

 the hive as soon as the}' had imbibed their supply of nectar ; and certainly the 

 anecdote given below, from Iluber, of the way in which humble-bees sufl"ered them- 

 selves to be cajoled out of their honey by hive-bees indicates such a good-natured 

 weakness of disposition as may easily be supposed to be combined with a propensity 

 to carousing when the opportunity presents itself. To speak seriously, however, it 

 would be well worth ascertaining, by exact observations, whether as great a 

 contrast between the temperance of humble-bees and hive -bees in feeding really 

 exists, as between their easiness of temper. There can be no doubt that some races 

 of insects vary as much in this last respect as some races of men. The difference as 

 to irritability between the temper of wasps and tl»at of bees is known to every one, 

 but has never been so happily hit otf as by Christopher North, whose universal 

 genius adorns every subject, in the description of it which he has put into the 

 mouth of the " Shepherd," in one of the Noctes, and which well deserves tran- 

 scription here from the pages of the voluminous periodical in which it has lain 

 entombed these sixteen years. 



" Shepherd. — 0' a' God's creturs the wasp is the only ane that's eternally out o' 

 temper. There's nae sic thing as pleasin' him. In the gracious sunshine, . , . . 

 when the bees are at work murmurin' in their gauzy flight, although no gauze 

 indeed be comparable to the tilamonts o' their woven wings, or, clinging silently 

 to the flowers, sook, sookin' out the hiney-dew, till their verni doups dirl wi' delight, 

 — when a' the flees that are ephemeral, and weel contented wi' the licht and the 

 heat o' ae single sun, keep dancin' in their burnished beauty, up and down, to and 

 fro, and backwards and forwards, and sideways, in millions upon millions, and yet 

 are never joistling anither, but a' harmoniously blended together in amity, like ima- 

 gination's thochts, — why, amid this 'general dance of minstrelsy,' in comes a 

 shower o' infuriated wasps, red bet, as if let out o' a flery furnace, pickin' quarrels 

 wi' their ain shadows — then roun' and roun' the hair o' your head, bizzin' against 

 the drum o' your ear till you think they are in at the ae hole and out at theither — 

 back again after makin' a circuit, as if they had repentit o' lettin' you be unharmed, 

 dashin' against the face o' you who are wishin' ill to nae livin' thing, and although 

 you are engaged out to dinner, stickin' a lang poishoned stang in just below your 

 ee, that afore you can rin hame frae the garden swells up to a fearsome hicht, 

 makin' you on that side look like a blackamoor, and on the opposite white as death, 

 sae intolerable is the agony frae the tail o' the yellow imp that, according to his 

 bulk, is stronger far than the dragon o' the desert." (Blackwood's Edinburgh. Mag. 

 Oct. 1826.) 



