THE MELOE PARASITE. 



43 



The eggs are laid in a mass covered with earth at the root of 

 some plant. During April and early in May, when the willows 

 are in blossom, we have found the young recently hatched Iarva3 

 in considerable abundance creeping briskly over the bees, or with 

 their heads plunged between the segments of the body, greedily 

 sucking in the juices of their host. Those that we saw occurred 

 on the Humble and other wild bees, and on various flies (Syr- 

 phus and Muscidse), and there is no reason why they should not 

 infest the Honey bee, which frequents similar flowers, as they are 

 actually known to do in Europe. These Iarva3 are probably 

 hatched out near where the bees hibernate, so as to creep into 

 their bodies before they fly in the spring, as it would be impos- 



Early Stages of Meloe. 



sible for them to crawl up a willow tree ten feet high or more, 

 their feet being solely adapted for climbing over the hairy body 

 of the bee, which they do not leave until about to undergo their 

 strange and unusual transformations. 



In Europe, Assmuss states that on being brought into the nest 

 by the bee, they leave the bee and devour the eggs in the bee 

 cells, and then attack the bee bread. When full-fed and ready 

 to pass through their transformations to attain the beetle state, 

 instead of at once assuming the pupa and imago forms, as in the 

 Trichodes represented in fig. 34, they pass through a hyper-meta 

 morphosis, as Fabre, a French naturalist, calls it. In other words, 

 the changes in form which are preparatory to assuming the pupa 

 and imago states are more marked and almost coequal with 



