THE MYRMIDONS 169 



squeezing with impunity the last. The workers 

 are exceedingly variable in size as well as in colour. 

 Here is one lying on its back, and no doubt possessed 

 of a sting, that is not one fourth the length of the 

 normal. I have never seen quite such a midge 

 working the flowers, and it may be that these tiny 

 ones are given duties that keep them entirely at 

 home. They possibly come from the grubs we 

 have seen living on the intercellular pollen mixture, 

 or, at any rate, are the result of stinted feeding on 

 account of bad weather. 



The humble-bee is but a poor breeder of 

 myrmidons by comparison with the social wasps 

 and the hive-bee. The underground humble-bee 

 with yellow bands and a white tail has the strongest 

 nest, though the underground red-tailed bee and 

 Bombus sylvaticus frequently run to several hun- 

 dreds of bees in the nest at one time. But a 

 fully developed wasp city has been shown to 

 number forty thousand when its four months 

 of growth had reached its climax. It is superior 

 organization that does it, for the humble-bee does 

 not yield in industry to any insect that flies, and 

 commonly begins its nest before the wasp. 



Orderliness and economy of material have been 

 carried by the wasps and the hornets to a height 

 undreamt of by the humble-bee. Cells are built 

 side by side, so that the six walls of the centre 

 one form each one wall of the six cells abutting on 

 it, and this system, as the reader well knows, is 

 continued through a comb of perhaps a thousand 



