136 THE HUMBLE-BEE 



allowed to enter and dwell in weak nests, not only 

 of the species upon which they naturally prey, 

 but of others. On June 22, 19 10, I found a queen 

 of B. ruderatus, that had lost the tip of one of her 

 antennae, in a weak colony of B. pratorum that I 

 had placed in a domicile under a wooden cover 

 in my garden. The pratorum queen was also 

 in the nest, but she seemed feeble, and died the 

 next day. Unfortunately the ruderatus queen dis- 

 appeared. 



But whether a Bombus queen could be got to 

 lay eggs in the nest of an unallied species I am at 

 present unable to say. If this were possible one 

 could easily rear colonies of rare species, and study 

 their habits from queens caught in the fields. 



PLACING QUEENS IN EMPTY NESTS 



The method of endeavouring to get a colony of 

 humble-bees started that would occur to most people 

 would be to place a queen in an empty nest in the 

 hope that she would adopt it. Many times have 

 I tried this, always (excepting on the occasions 

 mentioned below) with the disappointing result 

 that the queens flew away and never returned. 

 When I was a boy I used often to catch a queen 

 and put her into a box containing a nest. Some- 

 times I fed her and shut her up for a day or two 

 before letting her out, and then I always noticed 

 that she circled around the spot marking it as she 

 flew away, which seemed to show that she had some 



