Social Bees and Wasps 



are too wide awake to allow intruders in their hive if they 

 can help it, so certain workers are given posts as guardians 

 of the entrance. They run about near the door, caressing 

 all and sundry with their feelers, to discover if the 

 strangers' intentions be good or evil. Wasps are frequent 

 intruders, for they are always eager to destroy the honey 

 cells. 



By night the inmates of the hive are no more secure, 

 for it is then that the dreaded bee moths, both large and 

 small, steal through the entrance and deposit their eggs 

 about the hive. The larvae which hatch from these eggs 

 are exceedingly destructive ; they devour the wax and at 

 the same time spin a dense silken mantle over the comb. 

 However vigilant the doorkeepers may be, there is one 

 enemy with which they cannot cope, in the shape of a 

 little bee louse, which attaches itself to the hairy coat 

 of the bee and, plunging its mouth into some vulnerable 

 spot, sucks out the life juices of its host. 



The well-known bumblebee dwells in a smaller, less 

 perfect community than its relative the honey-bee ; more- 

 over, the workers do not differ very markedly from the 

 queens. With the approach of winter, all the bumble- 

 bees, except a few mated queens, die off. They hide 

 away during the cold weather and spend the time in a 

 semi-torpid state. The advent of warm weather brings 

 each queen bumble-bee from her hiding-place, intent on 

 founding a new community. Unlike her domesticated 

 relative, who takes no part in the building of her home, 

 the bumble-bee queen gathers together an odd assortment 

 of stray herbage and, in some hollow in the ground, con- 

 structs a single waxen cell, lined with a paste of pollen 

 and honey. Several eggs are laid in the cell and it is 

 then closed by the mother bee ; later on a second and a 

 third cell will be made, each one being fastened to its 

 neighbour by a glue made of pollen and honey. Before 

 long the eggs hatch and the grubs quickly devour the 

 store of food in their cell ; then the queen makes a hole 



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