Order Hymenoptera (Plate 25, Fig. 4). This suck- 

 ing mouth is specially adapted for getting the nectar 

 from fairly long flowers such as salvia, sunflowers, 

 cosmos, and many of our native "pea flowers." Of 

 course bees can visit open shallow flowers such as 

 Leptospermum and some of the Eucalyptus. We 

 have seen bees on the shallow green flowers of ivy, 

 suckinor off the whitish secretion on the flower. 

 These bees play a very important part in the pol- 

 lination of flowers, for even solitary bees have to 

 gather a large quantity of pollen and honey to be 

 placed in each cell, and hive bees must gather an 

 enormous quantity of pollen and honey to provide 

 the food supplies of the hive. Hence these 

 bees are constant dependable visitors to certain 

 flowers — ex. : Pcrsoonia (geebung). Some 

 flowers are specially adapted for the visitation 

 of bees, having mechanical devices to keep 

 out small insects such as ants, and larger useless 

 insects such as butterflies. Such flowers are snap- 

 dragon and many of our bush ''pea-flowers." On 

 the other hand hive bees are in turn unwelcome 

 guests to many of our native flowers, such as the 

 red spider plant (Grcvillca pmiicea) and "bread 

 and meat" (Darzvinia), for they do not cross-pollin- 

 ate these flowers which depend on birds to do so. 



There are two large groups of these long-tongued 

 bees: — 



(i) Solitary Bees. (2) Social Bees. 



(i) Solitary bees. These bees make various kinds 

 of nests, and may be popularly termed "carpenter 

 bees," "mason-bees," "leaf-cutting bees," accord- 



