VIII BOMBUS HORTORUM 181 
The cocoons are of a lighter yellow than those 
of ruderatus. 
The hum of this species is not so loud as that of 
many others, and the queen flies very quietly to and 
from her nest. 
Irish specimens of the queen are slightly larger 
than English ones and have the coat slightly 
coarser, with the yellow thoracic bands rather wider, 
especially the posterior one, this being almost as 
wide as the anterior one. In Irish males the yellow 
bands are also rather wide: a male in the Irish 
National Museum from Milford, Co. Donegal, has 
the anterior band twice as wide as the black band 
immediately behind it. A suitable name for the 
Irish variety of Lortorume is wwernicus. 
The tongue of the queen is almost as long as the 
entire insect, extending to five-eighths of an inch. 
It can therefore extract honey from the longest- 
tubed flowers, such as the woundworts, honeysuckle, 
nasturtium, red clover, white dead-nettle, and hore- 
hound, and it prefers these to flowers that are 
accessible to the shorter-tongued bees, its long 
tongue making it difficult for it to work on the 
latter. 
