110 BRITISH BEES. 



We find the bees are not at all exempted from this 

 prevailing condition. They have many enemies and 

 parasites of remarkably differing organization. They 

 are attacked by many kinds of birds, among which the 

 Merops Apiaster (or bee -eater) is conspicuous. All 

 the swallow tribe prey upon them, as do the shrikes and 

 some of the soft-billed small birds, and also many small 

 quadrupeds when they can find the opportunity. Wasps 

 also attack them, but they do not often get entangled 

 in spiders' nets, being generally too strong for the re- 

 tention of its meshes, but I have seen a Bombus en- 

 veloped in a tangle of its wonderful filament. 



The wild bees' parasites are of two kinds, personal, 

 and such which, like the young of cuckoos, live at the 

 expense of the offspring. The personal parasites are 

 again of two kinds, for bees are infested with several 

 kinds of Acari, and once I found a Bombus upon the 

 ground in Coombe Wood so swarming with the Acarus 

 that it lay hopelessly helpless until I threw it into a 

 pool of water, when its attaches were washed away. But 

 the poor bee seemed so prostrated by their attack, that 

 even when freed from them it had not energy to fly, and 

 having landed it I left it to the kindly nursing of nature. 



A little yellow hexapod larva sometimes also infests 

 the wild bees in great numbers, running over and about 

 them with great activity. I have never followed these to 

 their development, but they are said to be the larvae of 

 Meloe proscarabaeus, a conspicuously large coleopterous 

 insect. The assertion has produced much discussion; 

 and I believe the larva has been bred to the imago, and 

 consequently it has been proved that it is the larva of 

 that insect. But that it should be parasitical upon so 

 small a creature, and that numbers should infest it for 



