184 BRANCH ARTHROPODA 



bee watching her nest. The old nest is cleaned out by the whole family 

 and used again by one of them. 



The guest-bees (In'quilines) infest the nests of both solitary and social 

 bees, sonictiines being unwelcome guests. They have, of course, no 

 worker forms, only males and females, since work is not necessary when 

 they can live off the bounty of others. Those infesting the nests of 

 solitary bees steal into the nest before it is completed and lay their eggs, 

 which hatch before those of the host, and devour the food intended for the 

 young of the rightful owner. Strangely enough, the Inquilines {Psith'yrus) 

 seem to be welcome, for if they were not the bumble-bees surely would 

 drive them out, for they certainly could. The female lays her eggs in a 

 bumble-bee's nest, and when the larva; hatch they are cared for by the bum- 

 ble-bees as if they belonged to them. Sometimes the guests very closely 

 resemble their hosts in size and color, but in other cases they are marked 

 very differently. The males resemble the bumble-bees so closely in ap- 

 pearance and structure that it is difficult to determine whether they belong 

 to Psithyrus or Bo^nbus, but the females are easily distinguished, for the 

 pollen-basket of the hind legs has been lost through disuse. There are 

 no workers among the Psithyrus, and if for any reason the supply of the 

 host should fail them, the guests would starve, for they are so degenerate as 

 to actually be unable to work. Kellogg says these guest-bees "are like 

 bumble-bees in so many structural details unnecessary for deception (mim- 

 icry) that they must be looked on as a degenerate offshoot from the Bom'- 

 bidae," that is, as degenerate bumble-bees. 



The social bees, which are native, belong to the genus Bombus. The 

 bumble-bees, like the ants, live in communities having three kinds of in- 

 dividuals: males, females, and workers. In early spring each queen which 

 has survived the winter by hibernating seeks some unoccupied mole's nest 

 or mouse's nest or digs a cavity in the ground for her nest. In this she 

 deposits a ball-shaped mixture of pollen and honey and lays a few eggs, 

 not over twenty, upon it. Then she brings another supply of food and de- 

 posits more eggs. When the first larvae hatch they feed upon the food 

 provided, and when grown each spins a silken cocoon and pupates. These 

 all form worker bees, which enlarge the nest and provide more food . The 

 queen lays more eggs and the workers now enclose the larvae in waxen 

 cells. A few cells also are filled with pollen or with honey. The nest 

 may become as large as one's head and is covered loosely- with bits of vege- 

 tation. It usually has two or more openings. " Later in the suniiner males 

 and females appear, and it can be .said to the credit of the bumble-bee (|uet;ns 

 that they are not jealous, but allow the young (jueens to live with them in 

 the nest." In early winter all liumble-bees perish e\<-ept th(^ young (jueens, 

 which hibernate in some crack or crevice. There are more than fifty species 

 of buml)le-b(>es (Homfms) in the United States. They differ in size and in 

 the arrangeni(>nt of the black and yellow color-patterns. 



The honey bee is a native of Europe, but has been domesticated the 

 world over. " It has been known and cared for by men for centuries. 

 There are two genera: (1) Melipona, which has the sting blunted and ap- 

 parently never used as a weapon, lives in the tropics and consists of numer- 

 ous species which have been little studied. (2) Apis has but few species, 

 one of which is our common hive bee. 



The community consists normally of one queen, from less than a hundred 

 to several hundred males, and from about 10, ()()() workers in winter to .50,000 

 in summer. The queen (Fig. 149, K) may be known by her long slender ab- 



