264 THE HUMBLE-BEE 



of the comb ; this scent may be perceived by 

 smelling the bees that have been collected in the 

 glass jar when a nest is taken, after they have been 

 allowed to quiet down. But if these bees are 

 irritated, by being breathed upon, for instance, 

 another smell, namely that of sting-poison, is pro- 

 duced. That the humble-bees themselves are 

 highly sensitive to these different smells I haflje had 

 many striking proofs. Once I saw a lucorum queen 

 enter one of my domiciles in which a lapidarius 

 queen had collected a lump of pollen and deposited 

 her first eggs. Although the lapidarius was not 

 at home, the lucorum queen bundled out of the nest 

 in great confusion, whether disgusted or terrified 

 I cannot say. 



This antipathy to the smell of a strange species 

 and its brood is probably the chief obstacle in the 

 way of getting different species to fraternise in a 

 nest. The introduction of cocoons containing 

 workers near emergence from a sylvarum nest into a 

 strong lapidarius nest produced a great commotion 

 which did not completely subside for a day or two, 

 and when the sylvarum workers crept out they 

 were all killed. A small pellet of ruderatus wax 

 placed in the same colony threw it into an uproar. 



On the other hand several remarkable associa- 

 tions between strange species occurred. A dwarfed 

 lapidarius worker in some way got out of one of my 

 lapidarius nests and entered a nest of terrestris in 

 which a queen and two workers were confined. 

 She immediately became one of the family, paying 



