THE SOLITARY BEES 



THE life -history of an ordinary pair of solitary 

 bees is, roughly, as follows : I will take for an 

 example one of the spring species of Andrena. 

 Many people know the little red bee, which for 

 some apparently unaccountable reason sud- 

 denly appears in myriads on their lawn or 

 gravel path, throwing up little mounds of finely 

 powdered earth in this respect being quite 

 different from worm casts, which are formed of 

 wet mould and the particles of which cling 

 together sometimes causing considerable alarm 

 as to the possible effect on the lawn. These 

 have hatched out from burrows made by their 

 parents in the previous year, the mouths of which 

 have been filled up with earth and therefore are 

 quite invisible till the newly fledged bees gnaw 

 their way out. They, in their turn, are now 

 making fresh burrows for their own broods ; 

 possibly they infested some one else's lawn the 

 year before or were only in comparatively small 



