CURIOSITIES OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



BEES AND THEIR COUNTERFEITS. 



The Bee is a name common to all the species of a very 

 numerous tribe of Insects of the order H}jmenoptera. The 

 bee family was termed by the great French naturalist 

 Latreille, Mellifera (honey-gatherers), or AiUhophila (flower- 

 lovers), both terms being characteristic of the general habits 

 of the family, but the former the most appropriate. In 

 England alone about 250 species have been discovered. No 

 insect is so well known to the general public as the common 

 hive-bee {Apis mellijica) of North- Western Europe. All the 

 habits, peculiarities, and wonderful and interesting social 

 arrangements of this insect have been described and explained 

 in numerous works ; but, although the natural history of 

 our common hive-bee has been made so generally known, the 

 other members of the bee family have found but few popular 

 historians, and less is generally known a1)out them, except to 

 entomologists, than about other far less interesting insect 

 families. 



Yet there are many wonderful peculiarities connected with 

 different species of the bee tribe which would amply repay 

 the labour of a little observation and study. We shall, there- 

 fore, direct the reader's attention to a few remarkable species 

 of British and foreign bees, more especially with reference to 

 certain extraordinary resemblances which exist between some 

 of the honey-collecting species and those belonging to the 



