78 THE HUMBLE-BEE Iv 
coloured and bears some slight resemblance to a 
house-fly. 
Among the smaller and less important inhabitants 
of humble-bees’ nests are beetles belonging to the 
genus Antherophagus. A. nigricornis is yellowish- 
brown, about 53; in. long and +5 in. wide.’ Little 
flies with beautiful irridescent wings are sometimes 
to be seen running rapidly over the comb, the 
females with their bodies enormously distended : 
these are examples of Phora vitripennts. Possibly 
their larvae consume the humble-bees’ eggs. 
The larva of the fly Coops lives inside the body 
of the larva and pupa of the humble-bee, the perfect 
fly emerging from the adult humble-bee sometimes 
after the latter has been killed and placed in a 
collection ; but I have not met with it in East Kent. 
Neither have I found the rare ant-like fossor, 
Mutilla europea, in the nests, although it has been 
recorded from Hampshire in the nests of 2. agrorum 
and several other species. The female of this 
remarkable parasite is about half-an-inch long, wing- 
less and black, with the greater part of the thorax 
1 Other beetles that I have found in humble-bee’s nests are Aztherophagus 
stlaceus, Cryptophagus setulosus, Epurea estiva, Lathrimeum atrocephalum, 
and Choleva nigricans. Probably the three latter were casual visitors. 
A little Braconid (kind of ichneumon-fly), which Mr. Claude Morley has 
determined as being closely allied to (possibly identical with) A7steromerus 
mystacinus, was found in several nests containing Antherophagus, and is 
perhaps parasitic on it. 
Mr. W. H. Tuck at Bury St. Edmunds found over fifty species of beetles 
and several Hemiptera, etc., in humble-bee nests, and also bred the following 
Diptera from larvee found in the nests :—Chrysotoxum festivum (B. lapidarius), 
Eristalis intricarius (B. agrorum), and Leucozonia lucorum (L. terrestris), See 
Tuck’s lists of species in the Extomologist’s Monthly Magazine, July 1896, 
p. 153, and March 1897, p. 58. 
