THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 243 



in his recent work on the * British Bees.' A representation 

 of a number of humble bees at work will be found in Reau- 

 mur's * Meraoires.' The account is in substance as follows: 

 — " A worker bee lakes a small portion of moss, and with its 

 maxillge and fore legs proceeds to card and comb it ; when 

 the pieces are sufficiently disentangled they are placed under 

 the body by the iirst pair of legs, the intermediate pair 

 receive them and deliver them to the last, which push them 

 as far as possible beyond the anus. When, by this process, 

 the insect has formed behind it a small mass of moss well 

 carded, either the same or another insect, who takes her turn 

 in the business, pushes it nearer to the nest. Thus small 

 heaps of prepared moss are conveyed to its foot, and in a 

 similar manner they are conveyed to its summit or wherever 

 they are most wanted. A file of four or five insects is occupied 

 at the same time in this employment." 



The entrance to the nest is also described as being through 

 a " long gallery or covered way, sometimes a foot or more in 

 length." Although I have on several occasions observed 

 these bees at work, I never detected this co-operative process 

 of building : I watched a nest of Bombus Syl varum last sum- 

 mer, and saw working bees dragging pieces of grass towards 

 the nest, but each bee worked alone ; and some years ago I 

 saw a colony of Bombus senilis in which three or four 

 working bees were dragging pieces of moss on to the nest, 

 not, as described by Shuckard, in the form of pellets, but 

 simply sprigs of moss, which the bees had apparently just cut 

 off, close to the nest. Neither have I ever been able to 

 detect the covered ways ; probably these are only occasion- 

 ally constructed : all the nests that J have examined had 

 entrances at the basal margin of the nest. Reaumur found 

 nests with " the interior surface or roof cased or sealed with 

 a kind of coarse wax, in order to keep out the wet:" this is 

 a process that none of the nests that I have taken had under- 

 gone : I have in wet seasons found nests containing a mass 

 of comb covered with mould, all the grubs having perished, 

 and apparently the entire community had shared the same 

 fate. 



Fkederick Smith. 

 (To be continued). 



