Wasps, Bees, and Ants 5 i 5 



shingles on a roof, beneath stones lying on the ground, and in Florida in the 

 tubular leaves of a pitcher-plant." 



Other common genera of solitary long-tongued bees are Anthophora 

 (Pi. XII, Fig. 11), the species of which are hairy and robust-bodied, looking 

 indeed much like small bumblebees, Melissodes and Synhalonia with very 

 long antennK, rather hke honey-bees in general appearance, and others 

 of the great family Anthophoridje. All these bees agree in general habits 

 with those already described, but every species presents an opportunity for 

 interesting and valuable work by amateurs and nature-lovers in observing 

 precisely its nest-building habits and life-history. No more attractive 

 opportunity for outdoor observers offers than that of the field study of the 

 solitary bees. 



As mentioned at the beginning of the discussion of the solitary bees, some 

 species are parasitic or, more properly named, guest or inquiline in habit. 

 That is, the females of these species, instead of building a nest-burrow of 

 their own and storing it with food, lay their eggs in the nest-burrows of other 

 bees, so that the larva; on hatching will be able to feed on the supplies stored 

 up by the host-bee. This habit is not confined to a few species, but is com- 

 mon to a surprisingly large number of solitary bees. Two entire famihes, 

 including a hundred species of North American bees, are exclusively composed 

 of parasitic bees (in addition a third parasitic family, an offshoot of the 

 bumblebees, is mentioned in connection with the account, later, of the social 

 bees). These two families are the cuckoo-bees, Nomadidae, mostly bright- 

 colored species, metallic blue or green with the abdomen spotted or banded 

 with yellow or white, and the Stelids, differing structurally from the cuckoo- 

 bees by having only two, instead of three, submarginal cells in the wings. 

 Ashmead believes that the Nomadidae are descended from the Anthophoridae, 

 and the Stelids from the Megachilidte, the parasitic habit having arisen 

 independently in the two groups. Howard mentions the interesting fact 

 that the cuckoo-bees seem not only to be tolerated by their hosts, but that 

 in some cases it has been observed that enough food is stored by the host- 

 bee to enable the larv;c of both host and guest to complete their development 

 side by side and to issue simultaneously as adult bees. It may indeed be 

 found, as has been discovered in numerous other cases of commensal life, 

 that the cuckoo-bee gives, in some way, aid to the ho.st, so that the living 

 together is mutually advantageous. 



With the wasps there are no transition stages, among living forms, between 

 a strictly solitary life, where each female makes her own independent nest- 

 burrow, lays an egg in it and stores it with food, or brings food to the larva 

 through its life, and the social or communal life exhibited by the yellow- 

 jackets and hornets, where many females (of arrested sexual development, 

 although not always to such a degree as to be actually incapable of producing 



