104 THE HUMBLE-BEE 



VII 



eventually wax - moth caterpillars devoured the 

 brood. 



ATTRACTING QUEENS TO OCCUPY ARTIFICIAL 



DOMICILES 



Towards the end of April 1894 I made a ball 

 of soft dead fibre from a tuft of pampas grass and 

 placed it in some long grass. I left this ball un- 

 disturbed until June 4, when, on examining it, great 

 was my pleasure to find it occupied by an agrorum 

 queen. The material had been worked into a snug 

 nest, inside which were five cocoons containing 

 pupae, one batch of very young larvae and a honey- 

 pot full of honey. 



The next spring I made about twenty nests 

 from the soft dead blades of grass that are in some 

 situations to be found in tufts under the new growth, 

 this being the material of which the mice in the 

 neighbourhood generally make their nests. In 

 some cases I lined the nest with still softer material 

 obtained by unravelling old rope and cutting it up 

 into lengths of about half-an-inch. Although I 

 placed these nests in the most likely places I could 

 think of, such as on grassy banks and under ivy at 

 the edge of a wood, not one of them was occupied 

 by humble-bees. 



No further attempts were made to lure queens 

 with artificial nests until the year 1905, when it 

 occurred to me to try to attract the underground- 

 dwelling species by placing my nests under the 

 ground. 



