256 INSECT LIFE. 



enter the room, but admitting of free examination of 

 the operations of the bees through the glass sides of 

 the hive. 



BEES.* 



Bees don't care about the snow; 

 I can tell you why that's so : 



Once I caught a little bee 



Who was much too warm for me ! 



Frank Dempster Sherman. 



The Bumblebees. — The clumsy, blundering 

 bumblebees are one of the most characteristic fea- 

 tures of roadside life. There are many kinds of them ; 

 more than fifty species have been described from 

 North America alone. 



With the bumblebees as with the honey-bee and 

 w^ith other social Hymenoptera, there are three 

 forms of individuals in each species — the males or 

 drones, the females or queens, and the workers. In 

 the spring and early summer only queens are found ; 

 these are larger than the other two forms. A little 

 later in the season the workers appear. There is a 

 great variation in size of the workers of some species, 

 but usually they can be easily distinguished from the 

 queens by their smaller size. The males or drones 

 are developed in the latter part of the summer. 

 They resemble the workers in size, but differ in that 

 the pollen baskets of the tibias of the hind legs are 

 imperfectly developed. The fringe of hairs is not so 

 long as in the workers, and there are scattered hairs 

 over the surface of the tibia within the fringes. 



* From Little-Folk Lyrics, by permission of Messrs. Houghton, 

 Mifflin & Co. 



