

286 ANIMAL LIFE 



Origin of workers. If the efforts of these four- 

 and six-banded Halictus to combat their most deadly 

 foe mouldiness are not altogether successful, they 

 have succeeded in another direction. The mother 

 lives to see her children emerge, and in exceptionally 

 favourable localities receives help from them in pro- 

 tecting and extending the colony. 



The first to hatch sometimes stay, one to guard 

 the entrance of the shaft, others to quest for honey 

 and pollen, or to build and stock more cells. Thus 

 we have queen and workers for the first time ; but these 

 workers are potential queens, and only in the richest 

 districts do they remain to form a temporary colony. 

 They in turn lay eggs, and from these drones arise 

 in the late autumn. One of the workers mates with a 

 drone, becomes a queen and hibernates in the deserted 

 nest until the next spring. 



The casual association of the first-born Halictus 

 with their mother and home becomes a settled habit 

 in the case of bumble-bees. The yellow and red-tipped 

 varieties still build underground. The first warm 

 spring day wakes the isolated queens that have sur- 

 vived the winter. From their retirement they take a 

 first flight in search of summer quarters. Each queen 

 works by herself. The common Bombus sinks a shaft 

 which she expands to form a cavern. Hither she brings 

 wood, moss, and leaves, then goes out again and fetches 

 some honey and pollen, and now her behaviour differs 

 in a marked way from that of the solitary bees. Unlike 

 them she has the advantage of possessing wax-plates 



