VII 



ii 4 THE HUMBLE-BEE 



a thunderstorm, because the mouths of the holes 

 were in a concavity ; but of the two remaining, one 

 was occupied by a latreillellus queen. 



Of these ten queens, all except one succeeded in 

 rearing her brood as far as the cocoon stage. But 

 from this stage onwards the colonies did not thrive 

 nearly so well in the tin domiciles as in the shallow, 

 earth -walled domiciles under the wooden covers. 

 The tin domiciles were not so sanitary, and another 

 drawback was that they were so deep in the ground 

 that observations could not be comfortably made. 

 The greater success of the tin domiciles than the 

 wooden-covered domiciles in attracting queens was 

 probably due to their being put down at a more 

 favourable time and in a more favourable place, for 

 in the following year {vide infra) they did not prove 

 so attractive to queens as the latter kind, which 

 would have been more successful in 1910 if the 

 season had not been abnormally damp. 



Unfortunately many of my small tenants came to 

 grief; but, thanks to my being able frequently to 

 examine the nests, the cause of failure was ascer- 

 tained in almost every case, and light was shed on 

 how humble-bees fall a prey to enemies and adverse 

 conditions. Moreover, my experience in attending 

 to the nests enabled me to watch in detail, step by 

 step, exactly how the queens proceed in nature to 

 establish their homes, and thus most of the infor- 

 mation about this given in the Life- History was 

 obtained. I paid as much attention to my protegees 

 as time permitted, and many of them would have 



