436 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



The humble bees. — The bumble bees make their nests in the ground. 

 Each colony is started anew in the spring by a fertilized female that 

 has survived the winter in some protected place. The bumble bee 

 queen is a perfect female of her species; she has liighly developed 

 ovaries, is equipped with wax glands on the abdomen, both dorsal and 

 ventral, and pollen-collecting organs on her hind legs. She is thus 

 able alone to start a colony and care for the young until the first brood 

 matures. By contrast the honey bee queen can do nothing but mate 

 and lay eggs. 



On emergence in the spring from her winter seclusion, the bumble 

 bee queen finds a small hole in the ground suitable for a nest. On the 

 floor she builds up a mound of pollen moistened with honey, con- 

 structs a wax cup on top of it, and in this deposits her first eggs. In 

 the manner of a bird she keeps the eggs warm by sitting on them mitil 

 they hatch. To provide food for herself during the brooding season, 

 the queen constructs a waxen pot in the nest which she fills with honey. 

 The emerging larvae are fed by their mother until they transform to 

 pupae. Because of the relative scarcity of food the first adults are 

 small. They are all females ; there being no males to attract them, 

 they become workers and proceed with enlarging the nest and collect- 

 ing pollen and nectar. The queen now devotes herself entirely to egg 

 laying. As the colony thus grows the workers feed and care for the 

 new larvae, and, since the latter are better fed than those of the first 

 brood, they develop into normal adults of both sexes. Mating now 

 takes place, and the fertilized females leave the nest in the fall to find 

 outside quarters for the winter. As cold weather comes on, the old 

 queen dies and the colony comes to an end. 



The social instincts of the bumblee bees appear to be less rigid than 

 those of the honey bees. The bumble bee workers sometimes assert 

 their feminme rights by laying eggs. This, according to Free and 

 Butler (1959), seems to infuriate the old queen, and even the workei-s 

 begin to quarrel among themselves. It is said by Free (1955) that 

 when males and females are being produced, some of the workers even 

 try to snatch the eggs as they are laid by the queen, and eat them if 

 successful. Here is a rare case of social order among the insects 

 getting out of hand, showing that instinct may be disrupted when 

 authority becomes lax. 



The stingless bees. — Members of the bee subfamily Meliponinae are 

 called stingless because they do not sting, but they do have very small 

 harmless stings. They live in tropical regions; their principal in- 

 terest here is that they show how different may be the social organi- 

 zations of different kinds of bees. Most stingless bees build their 

 nests in hollow trees, but some in the ground. The nest is constructed 

 of wax, which in these bees is produced by both tlie females (sterile 



