Social Bees and Wasps 



is still received with scepticism. It is said that every 

 community, of certain species, is aroused to its daily toil 

 by a trumpeter, who sounds the reveille. He or she must 

 be an early bee, for work with the bumble-bees begins at 

 three o'clock or so, in the early morning. 



There is a fly, or rather a bee, in the ointment, or in 

 the wax of the bumble-bee home. A lazy individual who 

 goes so far as to clothe herself in raiment remarkably 

 similar to that of her hosts enters the nest, constructs 

 cells and deposits her eggs therein. And there her labours 

 end, for she leaves the upbringing of her family to the 

 worker bumble-bees and lives an idle life herself, devouring 

 the pollen and honey which the other bees bring to the 

 nest. 



Darwin told a neat little story about cats and clover 

 in which bumble-bees are indirectly concerned. We will 

 give the story as it is told by Professor J. A. Thompson, 

 because he carries his point a step further than Darwin. 

 " If the possible seeds in the flowers of the purple clover 

 are to become real seeds," he says, " they must be fertilised 

 by the golden dust or pollen from some adjacent clover 

 plants. But as this pollen is unconsciously carried from 

 flower to flower by the bumble-bees, the proposition must 

 be granted that the more bumble-bees, the better next 

 year's clover crop. The bumble-bees, however, have their 

 enemies in the field-mice or voles ; so that the fewer field- 

 mice, the more bumble-bees, and the better next year's 

 clover crop. In the neighbourhood of villages, however, 

 it is well known that the cats make as effective war on 

 the field-mice as the latter do on the bees. So that next 

 year's clover crop is influenced by the number of bumble- 

 bees which varies with the number of field-mice, that is 

 to say, with the abundance of cats ; or, to go a step 

 further, with the number of lonely ladies in the village." 



We cannot afford a chapter to the social wasps, but 

 they so closely resemble the bumble-bees, in many 

 respects, that it would be superfluous to describe their 



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