78 THE HUMBLE-BEE 



IV 



coloured and bears some slight resemblance to a 

 house-fly. 



Among the smaller and less important inhabitants 

 of humble-bees' nests are beetles belonging to the 

 genus Antherophagus. A. nigricomis is yellowish- 

 brown, about y\ in. long and ^ in. wide. 1 Little 

 flies with beautiful irridescent wings are sometimes 

 to be seen running rapidly over the comb, the 

 females with their bodies enormously distended: 

 these are examples of Phora vitripennis. Possibly 

 their larvse consume the humble-bees' eggs. 



The larva of the fly Conops lives inside the body 

 of the larva and pupa of the humble-bee, the perfect 

 fly emerging from the adult humble-bee sometimes 

 after the latter has been killed and placed in a 

 collection ; but I have not met with it in East Kent. 



Neither have I found the rare ant-like fossor, 

 Mutilla europea, in the nests, although it has been 

 recorded from Hampshire in the nests of B. agrorum 

 and several other species. The female of this 

 remarkable parasite is about half-an-inch long, wing- 

 less and black, with the greater part of the thorax 



1 Other beetles that I have found in humble-bee's nests are Antherophagus 

 silaceus, Cryptophagus setulosus, Epunea (estiva, Lathrimaum atrocephahtm, 

 and Cholera nigricans. Probably the three latter were casual visitors. 



A little Braconid (kind of ichneumon- fly), which Mr. Claude Morley has 

 determined as being closely allied to (possibly identical with) Histeromertts 

 tnystacinus, was found in several nests containing Antherophagus, and is 

 perhaps parasitic on it. 



Mr. W. H. Tuck at Bury St. Edmunds found over fifty species of beetles 

 and several Hemiptera, etc., in humble-bee nests, and also bred the following 

 Diptera from larvae found in the nests : Chrysotoxum festivum (B. lapidarius), 

 Eristalis intricarius (B. agrorum), and Leucozonia lucorum (B. terrestris). See 

 Tuck's lists of species in the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, July 1S96, 

 p. 153, and March 1897, p. 58. 



