ROBBER BEES 191 



with a long proboscis can reach the honey in them, 

 and unless this particular bee comes along that 

 flower is not cross-fertilized. It might be sup- 

 posed, then, that these flowers are the reserve of 

 the kind of insect that is equipped to reach their 

 nectar, and that all the other kinds are tantalizingly 

 excluded from it. But that is to assume that bees 

 are both honest and unresourceful. The other 

 day my attention was arrested by the ongoings of 

 a bee which was busily engaged working the 

 beautiful blue flowers of a long spike of 

 delphinium. The delphinium carries its honey at 

 the bottom of a long spur formed by the pro- 

 longation of the upper petal, and presumably only 

 a bee with a considerable length of proboscis could 

 get at it. Whether the bee before me was of 

 that breed, I could not say. It was of the kind 

 known in the simple classification of youth as 

 a bumbee a hairy person with a coat pre- 

 dominantly black, pleasingly varied with old gold. 

 For the time being the point of interest about it 

 was that it did not enter a single flower or attempt 

 an entry, but went straight to the bottom of the 

 spur on the outside. On investigation, every spur 

 was found to be pierced about a quarter of an 

 inch from its extremity, and the bee was extract- 

 ing the honey burglariously without making the 

 usual payment of service. 



I continued to keep an eye on the delphinium, 

 and found that all the bees that came to it the 

 hive bee and two or more species of Bombus 

 were among the visitors went straight to the back 

 door. One began by going in the right way, but 



