42 



THE PARASITES OF THE HONEY BEE. 



34. Hive Trichodes. 



duced, is not born until it has assumed the pupa state or is just 

 about to do so. The larva (Fig. 33 a) is oval, eleven-jointed, 

 and white in color. The very day it is hatched, it sheds its skin 

 and changes to an oval puparium of ?i dark brown color. 



Its habits resemble those of the flea. Indeed, should we com 

 press its body strongly, it would bear a striking resemblance to 

 that insect. It is evidently a connecting link between the flea, 



and the two winged flies. 

 Like the former it lives on 

 the body of its host, and ob 

 tains its food by plunging its 

 stout beak into the bee and 

 sucking its blood. 



It has not been noticed in 

 this country, but is liable to 

 be imported on the bodies of 

 Italian bees. Generally, one 

 or two of the Braulas may, on 

 close examination, be detected 

 on the body of the bee ; sometimes the poor bees are loaded 

 down by as many as a hundred of these hungry blood-suckers. 

 Assmuss recommends rubbing them off with a feather, as the 

 bee goes in and out of the door of its hive. 



Among the beetles are a few forms occasionally found in bees 

 nests and also parasitic on the body of the bee. Trichodes 

 apiarius (Fig. 34, a, larva; 6, pupa, 

 front view) has long been known in 

 Europe to attack the young bees. In 

 its perfect, or beetle state it is found 

 on flowers, like our Trichodes Nuttallii, 

 which is commonly found on the Spiraea 

 in August, and which njay yet prove 

 to enter our beehives. The larva de 

 vours the brood, but with the modern 

 hive its ravages maybe readily detected. 



The Oil beetle, Meloe angusticollis 35. Meloe. 



(Fig. 35, male, differing from the female by having the anten 

 nae as if twisted into a knot ; Fig. 36, the active larva found on 

 the body of the bee), is a large dark blue insect found crawling 

 in the grass in the vicinity of the nests of Andrena, Halictus, 

 and other wild bees in May, and again in August and September. 



