242 



NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



Besides the honeybee there are about five thousand 

 different kinds of bees, bumblebees of many different 

 kinds, carpenter bees, digger or burrowing bees, potter 

 bees, and cuckoo bees, all having most interesting habits 

 and instincts, and many exceedingly beautiful. With all 

 our native bees the life story of the individuals is similar 

 to that of the honeybee, except in regard to the food of 

 the larvae, which may be leaves or insects ; but the story 

 of the colony is altogether different. Most of them are 

 ''solitary," and those that have social habits have not 

 developed the stability and perfection of organization 

 found in the hive bee and among the ants. 



In the spring, for example, there are no colonies of 

 bumblebees, and the few we see about early spring 

 flowers are solitary queens that have hibernated in some 

 protected shelter during the winter. They collect honey 

 and pollen and select suitable places for their homes 

 (commonly deserted mice nests), build cells and lay eggs 

 in them, feed the young, and thus continue until the 

 larvae begin to emerge. The first bees are small workers, 

 and they soon relieve their mother of the labors of both 

 field and nest. Subsequent broods during the summer 

 are large workers, and these rapidly increase the stores of 

 the nest. In August a generation of queens and drones 

 emerge, and these soon scatter over the fields and leave 

 the nest deserted. The workers and drones die, and the 

 queens alone survive the winter. 



Coville succeeded in moving bumblebee nests to glass-covered 

 boxes in his window arranged essentially like the beehives above 

 described. He did this by chloroforming the bees lightly in the 

 evening, when they were all at home. After being confined for a day 



