8o STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 



length of their " tongue/' Bombus can probe and 

 fertilise flowers which are beyond the reach of 

 Apis ; such are honeysuckle, the horehound and 

 red clover, whose introduction into New Zealand 

 proved a failure until the humble-bee was brought 

 in to fertilise it. Unfortunately, one of the two 

 species introduced from the Old Country, B. ter- 

 restris, has the habit of biting holes near the base 

 of the snapdragon, the foxglove and the broad- 

 bean flower, to get more readily at the nectaries, 

 and the colonists are apt to wish that another 

 species had been selected for importation. 



While the humble-bee hive is "in being " 

 for but three or four short summer months the 

 inmates are excessively busy, working themselves, 

 in fact, to death. They begin their foraging expe- 

 ditions earlier in the morning than does the 

 honey-bee, and they continue them until dusk. 

 Even when retired for the night they do not 

 rest, but spend the silent hours some in building, 

 some in tending the young and others in brood- 

 ing over the cocoons. After laying two hundred 

 to four hundred eggs and helping to bring up the 

 issuing larvae, the queen, as the season is closing 

 in, begins to lay special eggs destined to turn 

 into males or fertile females (i.e., queens). The 



