HYMENOPTERA. 163 
establish a new colony in the spring of the ensuing year. All the 
others, the little females not excepted, perish. 
Such of the ordinary females as have escaped the severity of the 
winter take advantage of the first fine weather to construct their 
nests. One species—4pis lapidaria—establishes itself on the surface 
of the earth under stones, but all the others form their habitation in 
it, frequently descending to a depth of one or two feet, in the way we 
are about to describe. Dry plains, fields, and hills are the localities 
they select. These subterranean cavities, which are of considerable 
extent and wider than high, have the figure of adome. The ceiling 
is constructed with earth and with moss, carded by these Insects, 
which they transport there, fibre by fibre, entering the cavity back- 
wards. A coating of coarse wax is laid over its walls. Sometimes 
a simple opening, designedly left at the bottom of the nest, serves 
for an entrance, and then again a winding passage covered with moss, 
and a foot or two long, leads to the domicil. The bottom of the 
Cavity is lined with a layer of leaves, for the accommodation of the 
brood. The females first place brown, irregular, mammiliform 
masses of wax there, called patée by Reaumur, and which, on ac- 
count of their shape and colour, he compares to truffles. Their in- 
ternal cavities are destined to enclose the eggs and larve. There 
the latter live in society until the moment has arrived when they are 
to become nymphs; they then separate and spin ovoid and silken co- 
coons, laid verticaliy against each other. In this state the Insect is 
always reversed, or, like the female nymphs of the common Bee, with 
the head downwards; we always find these cocoons perforated infe- 
feriorly, when the perfect Insects have left them. Reaumur says 
that.the larve feed on the wax which forms their dwelling; accord- 
ing to Huber, it merely protects them from cold and wet, their ali- 
ment consisting of a tolerably large quantity of pollen moistened 
with honey, with which the labourers carefully supply them; when it 
is consumed they perforate the cover of their cells, furnish them with 
more, and shut them up again... They even enlarge them when the 
increased growth of the larve causes them to be too much confined. 
We also find in these nests three or four small bodies composed of 
brown wax, or the same matter as the patée, and shaped like tum- 
blers or almost cylindrical pots, always open, and more or less filled 
with good honey. These reservoirs of the honey are not always 
placed in the same situation. It has been asserted that the labour- 
ers employed the empty cocoons for a similar use, but this I doubt, 
as they are of a silken material and perforated inferiorly. 
The larve are hatched in four or five days after the eggs have been 
laid, and complete their metamorphosis in the months of June and 
