THE UYMENOPTERA 361 



placed as food for the young. An egg is then laid in each pocket. 

 Others lay their eggs in the nests of other bees and are parasites upon 

 them, or inquilines in some cases, consuming the food provided for the 

 rightful inhabitant and starving it. Some construct mud nests while 

 others cut off pieces of leaves or sometimes flower petals, with which 

 they line cavities they excavate in wood, for their nests, and still others 

 tunnel in wood but use no leafy lining. The colonial forms establish 

 their homes in various places and build combs of wax .in which to store 

 the pollen and nectar which is their food and that of their young. 



Though many of the bees are solitary there is in some species a 

 tendency to make their holes in groups forming what are frequently 

 called "bee villages/' In a number of species this goes 

 still further, several bees uniting in the excavation of 

 a central burrow but each making lateral passages 

 from this to cells which are her own and in which her 

 own young are produced. If the former could fairly be 

 called "villages" it would seem that these last could 



with equal propriety be described as "apartment FIG. 382. Soli- 



houses," as has been done. Some of the bee villages ^ry Bee - some - 

 will include several thousand nests within a few square (Original.) 

 feet and might even be termed "bee cities." 



Some bees have a rather short hinder lip and are known as the "short- 

 tongued bees," but in the majority of these insects the central portion is 

 long and slender, enabling such forms to reach the nectar in long-tubed 

 flowers that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. 



.The leaf-cutter bees are usually rather small. Their nests are not 

 often noticed, being made in holes (frequently in wood) sometimes 

 dug by the bees themselves, but the leaves which they cut are familiar 

 objects as the cut is frequently a very true circle or double circle, the 

 piece removed in the latter case being rather oblong with rounded ends. 



The large Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa) are about the size of bumble 

 bees but in most cases are easily distinguished from them by the smooth 

 and glossy upper surface of the abdomen. These insects tunnel in 

 wood, often to quite a distance. The tunnels are divided into cells by 

 partitions of wood chips, a partition being built across after each cell 

 has been provided with a mixture of pollen and nectar and an egg. 



Bumblebees (Bombus, etc., of many species). There are many kinds 

 of bumblebees widely distributed over the globe but none are found native 

 in Australia. They live in colonies during the summer but only the queens 

 (females) survive the winter. In spring the queen (Fig. 383) seeks some 

 suitable place for a nest, generally a hole in the ground, and frequently 

 the deserted nest of a field mouse is chosen for the purpose. Here she 

 places a mass of pollen on which she lays some eggs, and the larvae which 

 hatch, feed upon the pollen, and when full-grown pupate in silken cocoons 



