Mining-Bees. 51 



gallery was found, terminating in a thimble-shaped horizontal 

 chamber, almost at right angles to the entrance and nearly 

 twice as wide. In this chamber there was a ball of bright 

 yellow pollen, as round as a garden pea, and rather larger, 

 upon which a small white grub was feeding ; and to which 

 the mother bee had been adding, as she had just entered a 

 minute before with her thighs loaded with pollen. That it 



Cell of Mining-Bee (Andrena). About half the natural size. 



was not the male, the load of pollen determined ; for the male 

 has no apparatus for collecting or transporting it. The whole 

 labour of digging the nest and providing food for the young is 

 performed by the female. The females of the solitary bees 

 have no assistance in their tasks. The males are idle ; and 

 the females are unprovided with labourers, such as the queens 

 of the hive command. 



Reaumur mentions that the bees of this sort, whose opera- 

 tions he had observed, piled up at the entrance of their 

 galleries the earth which they had scooped out from the 

 interior; and when the grub was hatched, and properly 

 provided with food, the earth was again employed to close up 

 the passage, in order to prevent the intrusion of ants, ich- 

 nuemon-flies, or other depredators. In those which we have 

 observed, this was not the case ; but every species differs 

 from another in some little peculiarity, though they agree in 

 the general principles of their operations. 



[The genus Andrena is an exceedingly large one, nearly 

 seventy species being acknowledged in England alone. They 

 choose various situations for their nest; a very favourite 

 situation is a hard-trodden pathway; into this the bees 

 burrow for some six or seven inches, and often drive their 

 tunnels to a depth of ten inches. Digging up these habita- 



