UPHOLSTERER-BEES. 49 



The manner in wliicli the cells of the nest are made 

 seems not to be very clearly understood. M. Latreille 

 says, that, after constructing her nest of the down of 

 quince-leaves, she deposits her eggs, together with a store 

 of paste, formed of the pollen of flowers, for nourishing the 

 grubs. Kirby and Spence, on the other hand, tell us, that 

 " the parent bee, after having constructed her cells, laid an 

 egg in each, and filled them with a store of suitable food, 

 plasters them with a covering of vermiform masses, appa- 

 rently composed of honey and pollen; and having done 

 this, aware, long before Count Eumford's experiments, what 

 materials conduct heat most slowly," she collects the down 

 from woolly plants, and " sticks it upon the plaster that 

 covers her cells, and thus closely envelops them with a 

 warm coating of down, impervious to ever}" change of 

 temperature." "From later observations," however, they 

 are " inclined to think that these cells may possibly, as in 

 the case of the humble-bee, be in fact formed by the larva 

 previously to becoming a pupa, after having eaten the 

 provision of pollen and honey with which the parent bee 

 had surrounded it. The vermicular shape, however, of the 

 masses with which the cases are surrounded, does not seem 

 easily reconcileable with this supposition, unless they are 

 considered as the excrement of the larva." * 



AVhether or not this second explanation is the true 

 one, we have not the means of ascertaining ; but we are 

 almost certain the first is incorrect, as it is contrary to the 

 regular procedure of insects to begin with the interior part 

 of any structure, and work outwards. We should imagine, 

 then, that the down is first spread out into the fonn required, 

 and afterwards plastered on the inside to keep it in form, 

 when probably the grub spins the vermicular cells previous 

 to its metamorphosis. 



It ^ might prove interesting to investigate this more 

 minutely ; and as the bee is by no means scarce in the 

 neighbourhood of London, it might not be difScult for a 

 careful observer to witness all the details of this singular 

 architecture. Yet we have repeatedly endeavoured, but 

 * Introduction to Entomology, vol. i. p. 435, 5th edit. 



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