xxiv INSECTA : HYMENOPTERA 385 



bee, and are of an exceptionally bright golden-brown colour, 

 due to the thick coating of hairs which are of this colour 

 dorsally, on the front of the thorax and of the abdomen ; 

 elsewhere they are dark brown. They sleep through the 

 winter, and when they awake in the spring they quickly begin 

 to make in the earth a little tunnel which may run straight 

 down for a few inches, or m&y take a winding course accord- 

 ing to the soil. Near the end, several lateral branches are 

 excavated to form brood cells. In each of these is placed a 

 little pellet of pollen and honey about the size of a pea, in 

 which is laid a single egg. Finally, the mouth of the tunnel 

 is covered up with a little mound of earth and then left. The 

 eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the food provided, and their 

 development proceeds without any further attention on the 

 part of the mother-bee, who indeed dies soon after she has 

 finished her little burrow. The male bee is rather smaller, 

 darker, and duller in colour. 



The Leaf-cutting Bees (Megachile) are also 

 so ^ tar yj an( ^ nave rather similar nests, but in this 

 case the bee does not excavate the tunnel, but takes 

 possession of cavities which she finds in the wood of tree- 

 trunks cavities made originally, perhaps, by a wood-eating 

 caterpillar and now deserted or she may use some convenient 

 crack in a wall, or occasionally, even, she may tunnel in 

 the ground. 1 The bee lines the tunnel, wherever it may 

 be, with a cylinder formed of pieces of leaves deliberately cut 

 by her from a plant, and inside this she makes little thimble- 

 shaped cells, one above another, also of leaf fragments (Fig. 

 299, c). Rose-leaves are used by one species of leaf-cutting bee, 

 other leaves by other species. The bee settles on the edge 

 of a leaf and cuts out a piece, as shown in Fig. 299, a. She clings 

 to the piece she is detaching, so that when finally it is 

 severed, she flies away with it doubled under her legs. Each 

 cell is formed of several layers of leaf fragments, and in each, 

 as it is finished, is placed a mass of pollen and honey and an 

 egg ; finally a cover to the cell is made of little circular pieces 

 of leaf. Another similar cell is made above the first, and so 

 on until there may be a column of six or seven of them. 

 These solitary bees have all a much shorter proboscis than the 

 hive-bees. 



1 British Hymenoptera Aculeata, by E. Saunders. 

 VOL. I 2 C 



