LAPLDAIIY-BEES. — HUMBLE-BEES. 59 



Lapidary-Bees. 

 A bee still more common, perhaps, than the carder is the 

 orange-tailed bee, or lapidary (Bomhus lapidaria), readily 

 known by its general black colour and reddish orange tail. 

 It builds its nest sometimes in stony ground, but prefers a 

 heap of stones such as are gathered off grass fields or are 

 piled up near quarries. Unlike the carder, the lapidary 

 carries to its nest bits of moss, which are very neatly 

 arranged into a regular oval. ' These insects associate in 

 their labours ; and they make honey with great industr3% 

 The individuals of a nest are more numerous than the 

 carders, and likewise more pertinaciously vindictive. About 

 two years ago Ave discovered a nest of these bees at Compton- 

 Bassett, in Wiltshire, in the centre of a heap of limestone 

 rubbish ; but owing to the brisk defensive waifare of their 

 legionaries, we could not obtain a view of the interior. It 

 was not even safe to approach within many yards of the 

 place ; and we do not exaggerate when we say that several 

 of them pursued us most pertinaciously about a quarter of 

 a mile. (J. E.) 



Humble-Bees. 



The common humble-bee {Bomhus terrestris) is precisely 

 similar in its economy to the two preceding species, with 

 this difference, that it forms its nest underground like the 

 common wasp, in an excavated chamber, to which a winding 

 passage leads, of from one to two feet, and of a diameter 

 sufficient to allow of two bees passing. The cells have no 

 covering beside the vault of the excavation and patches of 

 coarse wax similar to that of the carder-bee. 



Social-Wasps. 

 The nest of the common wasp ( Vespa vulgaris) attracts 

 more or less the attention of everybody ; but its interior 

 architecture is not so well known as it deserves to be, for 

 its singular ingenuity, in which it rivals even that of the 

 hive-bee (^Ajns 7neUiJica). In their general economy the 

 social or republican wasps closely resemble the humble- 

 bee (^Bombus), every colony benig founded by a single 



