ROBBER BEES 193 



the bee which cannot negotiate the 9 mm. tube 

 suffers a serious deprivation. Imagine the case of 

 such a Bombus coming for the first time upon a 

 field of red clover in flower. The whole air simply 

 smells of honey, and the odour, as is well known, 

 excites a bee as the smell of warm bread excites 

 a hungry boy. Bombus with the short proboscis 

 throws herself at the first flower in sight, and 

 plunges her nose into one of its many florets, only 

 to make the horrid discovery that she cannot reach 

 the nectar, though she can get within the breadth 

 of a finger-nail of it. Bees have short tempers, 

 and with a bombian gesture of irritation she with- 

 draws from the first floret and tries another. The 

 result is the same, and half a dozen trials find 

 her in a towering rage. To make matters worse, 

 she sees another Bombus, not a bit higher in the 

 scale of being than herself, only longer in the 

 nose, which detracts rather than otherwise from 

 her beauty, absorbing honey to her heart's content. 

 It is more than the short-nosed Bombus can 

 stand. She must liberate her angry feelings on 

 something or somebody, and she flies at the clover 

 again and bites it viciously. And then a queer 

 thing happens ; she finds that it is quite easy 

 to bite through the tube, so she bites and drinks 

 and bites and drinks again. Perhaps, as a 

 matter of fact, this discovery of the short -nosed 

 bee was not made on clover. Many of the other 

 flowers of the same pea order store their honey 

 at the bottom of a long tube, and the bee which 

 would get at it honestly must have strength and 

 skill to pull the wings and keel of the flower apart, 



