130 THE’ HUMBLE-BEE vil 
to readers who may like to repeat my experiments 
and watch humble-bees starting their nests in their 
gardens, I would recommend the construction in 
April and May of domiciles with these covers, as 
shown in Fig. 23. As long as the weather remains 
fairly favourable the starting colonies will need no 
attention, except perhaps the placing of cylinders 
of tin over the mouths of the holes to protect 
them from mice and shrews; but if they are to be 
tided over a long-continued spell of unfavourable 
weather in June or the early part of July, it will 
be necessary to bring them indoors and feed them. 
Of all the queens that started nesting in my 
artificial underground domiciles during the three 
years 1906, I910, and 1911, sixty-six per cent were 
lapidarius, twelve per cent were /atrezllellus, six per 
cent ¢errestris, and four per cent of each of the fol- 
lowing species—ruderatus, hortorum, and sylvarune. 
The great preponderance of /apzdarius over the 
other species was remarkable, the number of /afz- 
darts being greater than all the rest put together ; 
and though, no doubt, it was partly due to the fact 
that /apidarius appears late, when natural holes 
are overgrown, and therefore difficult to find, it is 
probable that an artificial domicile is more to the 
liking of dafzdarius than of the other species. 
GETTING QUEENS TO BREED IN CONFINEMENT 
My first attempt at getting queens to start breed- 
ing in confinement was made when I was a boy. I 
