2i0 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



A Revision of Ike British Species of the Genus Bomhus. 

 By Fkkdkiuck Smith, Esq. 



Eleven years a<(o my jVIonogra])h of tlie Bees of Great 

 Britain was published : during the time that has subse- 

 quently elapsed a considerable amount of information has 

 accumulated, ])articularly in respect of the habits of the 

 species ; numerous errors and omissions have been detected 

 in the Monograph itself, and a iaw new s))eeies have been 

 discovered. I am therefore desirous of ])ublishing, in a series 

 of chapters, a concise revision of my former w()rl<, more par- 

 ticularly so since a recent work on the ' iJrilish Bees' has 

 been ])uljlished, in which 174 s])ecies are enumerated as 

 being the number at jjresent known to inhabit this country, 

 whereas 1 am accjuainted with 211: these circumstances 

 have induced me to bring togetlier, in a series of papers, uiy 

 present knowledge of this family. 



There is no genus of wild bees so generally known, in this 

 country, as that of Bombus : it contains the humble bees, 

 known to us even in childhood ; the schoolboy is familiar 

 with them, and but too frequently ruthlessly robs them of 

 their stores ; the artless rhyme that he lisped in childhood 

 taught ])im that the bee " gathers honey all the day from 

 every oi)ening flower," and he fails not to avail himself of 

 that knowledge. 



The Bombi arc among the first bees that are tempted forth 

 from their winter hybernaeulum, and those that first appear 

 are the females that were reared in the nests of the previous 

 year, and which have just awoke from the state of torpidity 

 in which they have ])ass(!d the winter months : their hum is 

 one of the utosl joyous notes that greet us in early spring. 

 Huujble bees are to be found almost everywhere : they arc 

 seen in every sunny nook, they are on the hills, they are in 

 the vall(!ys ; and if we are templed to wander over trackless 

 moors, far from the haunts of man, these bees arc there also. 



I'here are no bees that have a wider geographical range : 

 nineteen species inhabit this country, and nineteen additional 

 ones are found in other parts of Europe ; eighteen are known 

 from North America and the regions within the arctic circle ; 

 India, China, and the islands of the J'^astern Archipelago, 

 ha\e at present furnished twenty sj)ecies, and many more no 



