IV 



PARASITES AND ENEMIES Si 



if it might be a portion of the intestine of the 

 bee. I once found on a flower in the beginning f 

 July an ailing old terrestris queen with her abdomen 

 full of hair-like worms, probably Sphcerularia bombi. 

 The parasite is said to be particularly common in 

 Epping Forest. 



Badgers are said to be fond of scratching out 

 and eating the nests. Moles and weasels also 

 destroy them. But the greatest mammalian enemies 

 of the humble-bees are shrews and field mice. These 

 destroy the nests before any workers have emerged, 

 devouring the brood, and they are the only verte- 

 brates against which there is strong evidence of 

 having destroyed any of the nests that I have kept 

 under observation at Ripple. My experiences of 

 their depredations, and also of the harm done by 

 ants, will be given later (pages 1 16-1 19). 



Not many animals prey on the adult humble-bee. 

 It is well known that the red-backed shrike brings 

 them to its larder, impaling them on thorns, but 

 birds in general avoid them. Hoffer found swallows 

 and domestic fowls catching and eating humble-bees ; 

 but in East Kent I have never seen the former take 

 them, and the latter, I notice, are afraid of them. I 

 have seen places where the hibernating queens have 

 been picked out of the ground, probably by birds. 



Saunders says that dead humble-bees are often 

 found in numbers in a mutilated state under lime 

 trees, and explains that they have been caught, after 

 they have filled themselves with honey and become 

 drowsy, by the great tit and possibly other birds. 



G 



