18 THE HUMBLE-BEE 
nesting species may be seen throughout the spring 
hovering over the ground in woods and meadows 
making a diligent search for them; now and then 
the queen alights in a promising-looking spot and 
makes a closer examination of the ground on foot. 
Having found a suitable nest, the queen becomes 
rather excited and visits it frequently. Her first 
flight from her new home is a momentous one, for 
from it she has to learn how to find her way back 
again to it. Having accustomed herself to the ap- 
pearance of the entrance by crawling around it, she 
ventures to take wing and poises herself for a moment 
facing the entrance. Then she rises slowly, and, 
taking careful notice of all the surroundings, de- 
scribes a series of circles, each one larger and swifter 
than the last. So doing she disappears, but soon 
she returns and without much difficulty rediscovers 
the entrance. Similar but less elaborate evolutions 
are made at the second and third departures from 
the nest, and soon her lesson has been learnt so well 
that her coming and going are straight and swift. 
She now spends a good déal of time in the nest, 
the heat of her body gradually making its interior 
perfectly dry. If the nest has been long unoccupied 
and is in bad repair, she busily sets to work to 
reconstruct it by gathering all the finest and softest 
material she can find into a heap, seizing and pulling 
the bits of material with her jaws and passing them 
under her body backwards with her middle and hind 
pairs of legs; then she creeps into the middle of the 
heap and makes there a very snug and warm cavity, 
