Curious History of the Oil-Beetle. 



In a most interesting paper on the 

 larval habits of the Blister beetles, in 

 the Transactions of the St. Louis 

 Academy of Science, Prof. C. V. Riley 

 thus speaks of the bee-parasitism of 

 the Oil-Beetle: 



It is generally stated by writers on 

 the Hive-bee that the Oil-Beetle {3Ieloe) 

 is one of its parasites. The possibility 

 that our more common blister-beetles 

 were similarly parasitic on bees, taken 

 in connection with the frequent com- 

 plaints from apiarists of the wholesale 

 death of bees, from causes little under- 

 stood, led me, some years since, to pay 

 attention to the biological character- 



1.S2S named it Tnungidinus andreneta- 

 rmn. Newport, in 1845, {Trans. Linn. 

 >Soc., vol. XX, p. 297), first rightly con- 

 cluded that it was carried into the 

 nests of bees, and described, in addi- 

 tion, the full-grown larva from exuvial 

 characters, and the coarctate larva and 

 pupa, which he found in the cells of 

 Anthophora retusa. He failed, howev- 

 er, to fill the gap between the first and 

 full-grown larva; and this Fabre first 

 inferentially did in 1858, [Ann. d. <S'c. 

 Nat. Zool. t. ix. p. 205), by tracing tlie 

 analogous stages of Sitaris. 



The female 3feloe is very prolific. — 

 She lays at three or four different in- 

 tervals, in loose, irregular masses in 

 the ground, and may produce from 

 three to four thousand eggs. These are 

 soft, whitish, cylindrical, and rounded 



Meloe:— a, first larva; b, claws; c, antenna; d, 

 maxillary palpus; c, labial palpus; /, mandible; g, an 

 abdominal Joint; h, imago; i, antenna. 



istics of the blister-beetles, in the hope 

 of ascertaining whether or not they 

 really bear any connection with bee 

 mortality. From these investigations 

 I am satisfied that Meloe is only parasi- 

 tic on the perfect Hive-bee as it is on 

 so many other winged insects that fre- 

 quent flowers; and that it cannot well, 

 ill the nature of the case, breed in the 

 cells of any social bee, whose young are 

 fed by nurses in open cells. 



The history of Meloe may be briefly 

 summed up as follows: The newly 

 hatched, or first larva, (now generally 

 called f/-«(Hgrf?i»), was first mentioned 

 in 1700 by the Holland entomologist 

 Goedart, who hatched it from the egg. 

 Frisch and Reaumur both mistook it 

 for a louse, peculiar to bees and flies. 

 De Geer, who also obtained it from the 

 egg, mentions it in 1775 as a parasite 

 of Hymenoptera. Linnaeus called 

 what is evidently the same thing, Ped- 

 iculus apis: Kirby, in 1802, described it 

 as Pedicuius meliUce, and Dufour, in 



at each end. They give birth to the 

 triungulins, which, a few days after 

 hatching — the number depending on 

 the temperature— run actively about, 

 and climb on to Composite, Ranuncu- 

 laceous and other floAvers, from whicli 

 they attach themselves to bees and flies 

 tliat visit the flowers. Fastening alike 

 to many hairy Diptera and to Iljaiien- 

 optera, which can be of little or no 

 service to them, many are doomed to 

 perish, and only the few fortunate ones 

 are carried to the proper cells of some 

 Anthophom. Once in the cell, the tri- 

 ungiilm falls upon the bee egg, which 

 it soon exhausts. A molt then takes 

 place and the second larva is produced. 

 Clumsy, and with locomotive power 

 reduced to a minimum, this second 

 larva devours the thickened honey 

 stored up for the bee larva. It then 

 changes to the pseudo-pupa, with the 

 skin of the second larva only partially 

 shed; then to a third larva within the 

 partially rent pseudo-pupal skin, and 



