vil PESerNG OURENS IN'°NESTS 1437 
idea of resurning. In the middle of June 1907, 
when driving along a road near Sandwich, my 
attention was arrested by about twenty /apzdarius 
queens endeavouring to burrow into a grassy bank 
facing north, the area of which was only about 
thirty square yards. The opinion I formed of this 
strange behaviour of so many queens was that they 
had been hibernating in the bank and were en- 
deavouring to return to their burrows in obedience 
to a strong homing instinct. 
On May 23, I911, two ruderatus queens that | 
had kept together in captivity for four days managed 
to escape through a hole in the bottom of my bee- 
house. One of the queens was seen shortly after- 
wards endeavouring to burrow into the ground 
close to this hole. 
Encouraged by the return of this queen, I de- 
termined to make a careful trial of placing queens 
in empty nests. On May 30 I selected three of my 
terrestris queens that had been confined three or 
four days, and at dusk placed them in three of my 
underground domiciles, one in each domicile, after 
having sketched in my note-book the shape of the 
lacerations on the edges of their wings so that I 
should know each of them again. I had previously 
placed a bees-wax cell full of diluted honey in each 
Or the nests. On June 2, at 8.30 p.m., I visited 
each domicile, lifting off the cover and tapping 
lightly on the nest material, hardly expecting the 
nests to be occupied. Two of the nests gave no 
answer, but my tapping on the third produced an 
