x MISCELLANEOUS. NOTES 265 
as much attention to the brood as the ¢errestris 
workers did. When the nests in my bee-house 
were about to break up at the end of the season, 
the workers of the different species were often found 
in one another's nests. In all these cases the nests 
were weak; I have never known a bee of a strange 
species to gain admittance into astrong nest. Even 
Psithyrt, as has been mentioned, are not suffered to 
enter colonies of the species on which they prey if 
they are populous. 
The brood of the humble-bee is less easily killed 
by cold than that of the honey-bee. I have known 
lapidarius workers to hatch from cocoons that have 
not been incubated for two days, and I was some- 
times successful in getting bees to emerge from 
deserted cocoons by placing them between the 
squilts that covered my colonies of honey-bees. 
If I wished to do anything to or with a queen 
without exciting her, for instance to clip her wings, 
I found it best to let her fall into a drowsy state by 
confining her in a box for an hour or two without 
food. 
There are two ways of holding a queen in the 
fingers so that she cannot sting: (1) by grasping 
both wings close to the roots ;* and (2) by gripping 
the thorax on both sides. 
The eyes of a humble-bee, like a photographic 
plate, are less sensitive to yellow light than ours. 
1 This method is also safe for a worker humble-bee and for a worker 
honey-bee of the Italian race or of my British Golden breed, but not for a 
worker of the English black honey-bee, nor for a wasp, the abdomen being 
more mobile in these. 
