44- REPORT OF No. ID 



Tile honey bee seeking pollen and some other insects may occasionally be 

 factors in this work, but cannot be considered as of any importance m com- 

 parison with the bumble bee. That these statements are based on fact may 

 be strikingly seen in the experience of the New Zealand growers of clover 

 seed. In that country attempts to obtain home-grown seed were scantily 

 rewarded until, about 1885, , the British Government introduced several 

 species of bumble bees. These insects reproduced rapidly, and have eliected 

 a vast improvement m the yields of seed obtained. So manifestly beneficial 

 did they prove, that the JNew Zealanders are now looking about for still 

 further species which they might with advantage import. In the summer 

 of 1905 a letter was received by the Ontario Department of Agriculture from 

 the Canterbury Agricultural and .Pastoral Association of New Zealand, seek- 

 ing information as to what species of insects perform the service of pollina- 

 tion in this country, in the hope that some superior to what they have might 

 be secured. 



There are in America as many as fifty or sixty distinct and described 

 species of bumble bees. Only a few of these, however, are sufficiently plenti- 

 ful to be of economic importance. In an excursion through a clover field 

 at Guelph this fall, three species were collected, namely, Bomhus fervidas, 

 B. ternarius, and B. horealis ; the first of which was by far the most com- 

 mon. About Toronto another species, B. corisimilis, is reported by Dr. 

 Brodie as one of the most numerous. 



Since the bumble bee plays such an essential role in connection with 

 the production of clover seed, it will be worth our while to enquire into its 

 life history and habits, for thereby we shall be enabled to arrive at some 

 important practical conclusions. ,' ' 



Bumble bees, like the honey bees of domestication, have among them 

 three kinds of individuals; the queens or females, the males, and the workers 

 or undeveloped females. All these will be found in a colony in the fall; 

 but on the approach of winter, the males and workers all perish, and the 

 fertilized queens alone go into hibernation, to perpetuate the species an- 

 other year. They remain in sheltered places, and in the spring those which 

 have survived, set out separately to found each a colony of its own. The 

 first care is to find a suitable place for the nest which is to be the home. 

 They often appropriate deserted nests of field mice, and also constT^uct nests 

 for themselves of dried grass, or moss, or of wool, locating them in a depres- 

 sion in the ground. In this is stored a mass composed of wax, pollen and 

 honey, in the latter part of which a number of eggs are at once deposited. 

 Other cells similar to the first are added from time to time, and more eggs 

 deposited as fast as their accommodation can be provided for. Owing to 

 this method of procedure, the resulting comb receives the characteristically 

 aimless construction with which we are so familiar. 



As the young larvae hatch, they feed upon the mass of pollen and honey 

 in which they lie. When fully sTown, each spins a lining to the cell which 

 it has formed, and transforms .to the pupal stage, finally emerging by gnaw- 

 ing its way out as a perfect bumble bee. After being thus emptied, these 

 cells are not used again for the same purpose, but become the receptacles 

 for the honey which is collejcted by the new brood of bees. For some time 

 only workers are produced, and as they become numerous enough the queen 

 is relieved from the various duties of collecting niaterial, buildins: comb, 

 and so forth, all of which she has performed until now, and devotes her 

 energies exclusively to the layino- of eggs. Thus V' the enrl of Qn-mTYiPr n 

 populous colony may have been built up from the slender beginning of the 

 spring. About this time, young queens and males also are produced, and 



