74 ROMANCE OF THE INSECT WORLD CHAP. 



her mission. She has to select the site of the house 

 that is to be, and to fashion it; to discover and collect 

 nourishment, and stock it in her cells, in quantity 

 sufficient for the proper development of the larvae, no 

 less and no more, but just enough. She lays her 

 eggs, and shortly after dies. If any fighting with 

 enemies has to be done while her operations are in 

 progress, she it is who does it, so her position in life 

 is no enviable sinecure. 



A group of these bees is popularly called the 

 Miners, a name fancifully bestowed upon them by 

 Reaumur to indicate the character of their labours. 

 They are little creatures (Andrena), but in spite of 

 diminutive proportions they are admirable burrowers, 

 driving their tunnels into the ground or masonry 

 to a depth of eight or ten inches. The soil they 

 select is often hard, such that an ordinary pocket- 

 knife makes no impression upon it, as a well-trodden 

 pathway baked by the sun ; occasionally they choose 

 loose sand. Usually the burrow is dug in a perpen- 

 dicular direction for several inches, when it takes a 

 sudden turn, and forms a rounded chamber. Here 

 the bee deposits a store of pollen * mixed with honey, 

 and lays a single egg. Creeping outside she 

 closes the orifice securely with the material she 

 has expelled in excavation, leaving the egg to hatch 

 and the young to come to maturity and escape 

 in due season. Some members of this genus, and of 

 Halictus, save themselves the trouble of making a 

 number of separate burrows. They add short sup- 

 plementary chambers, not more than an inch or so 

 long, from the sides of the first and main shaft, and 



