OF HARTING. 387 



In the fact that Humble bees store thfeir cells with 

 honey and pollen paste for the support of their young, 

 they differ from the wasps, but in other details of 

 their economy they are very similar to them. Their 

 colonies, which, like those of the wasps, are only for 

 a season, includes males, females, and workers of 

 different sizes, and the continuation of the species is 

 entirely dependent on the few impregnated females 

 that escape the rigours of the winter, each of these 

 founding its own family in the following spring. 

 Their nests are not very elaborate structures as com- 

 pared with those of the domesticated bee or the wasp, 

 they consist in the early part of the season of a rough 

 kind of waxen dome thrown over a rude reservoir of 

 the same material, rilled with pollen paste, and con- 

 taining several young grubs together. When the 

 latter are fully developed, they separate, and spin 

 oval upright cocoons side by side, from these they 

 escape as perfect insects, and the empty cocoons are 

 subsequently lined with wax and stored with honey. 

 The nest of Bombiis terrestris is underground in a 

 carefully smoothed cavity, the entrance to which is 

 through a long tunnel, that of Bombus muscorum is on 

 the surface, and concealed by a neatly felted covering 

 of moss, which is continued to some distance from the 

 main structure, in the shape of a tubular passage 

 intended for the ordinary traffic of the bees to and 

 from their nest 



In our brief notice of the Honey-bee we have 

 directed attention to the wonderful variation of in- 

 stinct in that species, developed under a very unusual 

 contingency, the accidental loss of a queen ; the 

 humble bee is not less remarkable for its faculty of 

 accommodating itself to special circumstances. These 

 insects are subject to the attacks of the Beetle mite 

 (Gammasiis Colcoptratorum\ already noticed in con- 

 nection with Geotrupcs stercorarius as being particu- 

 larly difficult to shake off, and they resort to a curious 



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