IV PAKASKIES AND ENEMIES 81 
if it might be a portion of the intestine of the 
bee. I once found on a flower in the beginning of 
July an ailing old ¢evvestvzs queen with her abdomen 
full of hair-like worms, probably Spherularia bomér. 
The parasite is said to be particularly common in 
Epping Forest. 
Badgers are said to be fond of scratching out 
and eating the nests. Moles and weasels also 
destroy them. But the greatest mammalian enemies 
of the humble-bees are shrews and field mice. These 
destroy the nests before any workers have emerged, 
devouring the brood, and they are the only verte- 
brates against which there is strong evidence of 
having destroyed any of the nests that I have kept 
under observation at Ripple. My experiences of 
their depredations, and also of the harm done by 
ants, will be given later (pages 116-119). 
Not many animals prey on the adult humble-bee. 
It is well known that the red-backed shrike brings 
them to its larder, impaling them on thorns, but 
birds in general avoid them. Hoffer found swallows 
and domestic fowls catching and eating humble-bees ; 
but in East Kent I have never seen the former take 
them, and the latter, I notice, are afraid of them. | 
have seen places where the hibernating queens have 
been picked out of the ground, probably by birds. 
Saunders says that dead humble-bees are often 
found in numbers in a mutilated state under lime 
trees, and explains that they have been caught, after 
they have filled themselves with honey and become 
drowsy, by the great tit and possibly other birds. 
G 
