HUNTING WILD BEES 



A striking diversion from the general habit of the 

 group has been noted by Professor Kellogg, of Leland 

 Stanford University, in a California burrowing bee (An- 

 thropora Stanjordiana) which makes its side galleries a 

 series of branching cells, each like the typical nest of 

 Andrena. Instead of sealing up and provisioning these 

 cells, leaving the larvse to feed themselves, she passes 

 to and fro in the open burrow, bringing her offspring 

 food, a curious appropriation of the habit of the social 

 wasps. 



These "neighborhoods" of burrowing bees sometimes 

 consist of hundreds of separate nests, in one recorded 

 case of nearly two thousand. One easily sees that it 

 is no light task to dig out and deport the quantity of 

 soil required. There is at least one record of an ingen- 

 ious miner who eased her toil by bringing moisture to 

 soften the soil. But the records do not show that this 

 rare development of genius has been transmitted. 



It has often befallen the author in his study of insect 

 and aranead life that the rarest finds were made on 

 well-worked ground and at his very doors. He was 

 not surprised, therefore, that one of the most interest- 

 ing stories of these apian troglodytes should have been 

 written lately of one that inhabits Wood's Holl, Mas- 

 sachusetts, a summer headquarters for naturalists.* 

 Halictus pruinosus Robertson, is a brilliant greenish bee, 

 a third of an inch long, that ranges from the Atlantic 

 coast westward to the Rockies. In the early summer 

 the workers begin to drill their burrows in sandy slopes 

 by the roadside, and by September their neighborhoods 

 are closely settled. The openings are several inches 



* Guests and Parasites of the Burrowing Bee Halictus. By Axel 

 L. Melander and Charles T. Brues. 



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