THE CUCKOO BEES 



THESE cuckoos live at the expense of their hosts. 

 The mother of the industrial brood makes her 

 cell and provisions it, and lays her egg. The 

 cuckoo bee manages to enter also and lay her egg 

 in the same cell, the usual result being that the 

 cuckoo devours most of the food instead of the 

 rightful offspring, which gradually gets starved 

 and dies, the cuckoo appearing in its place ; 

 but there have been cases, how frequent they 

 are is difficult to say, in which both offsprings 

 have emerged. 



The whole problem of the relationships be- 

 tween host and cuckoo is most interesting. In 

 some cases the cuckoos are so like their hosts 

 that it is difficult to tell one from the other, in 

 others they are so unlike that it is difficult to 

 trace any resemblance between them. There 

 are a great number of different kinds of cuckoos, 

 and most of them select a special host to associate 



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