222, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 
Emphor bombiformis (Cress) * 
These bees abound about the St. Louis region and can be 
seen at bald areas such as base-ball diamonds in late summer. 
The mother aire bring in water in which to carry on their 
mining operations, use a small portion of the excavated material 
to d ee around the nest openings, and then kick out 
to a distance the surplus pellets; (both turret and pellets can 
be seen in fig. 1). Finally when the burrow is completed the 
material in the turret is packed into the gallery. This is done 
by again carrying water, wetting portions of the chimney, 
usually not enough material in the turret to completely fill the 
ole and one often sees saucer-like depressions on the surface 
of the ground as in fig. 2. This tell-tale depression makes it 
easy for the investigator to locate completed nests for excava- 
tion and study. Many nests were seen on the baseball diamond 
at the Concord Schoolhouse near Kirkwood, Mo., July 27, 1930, 
where the photographs were taken. 
Anthophora walshii (Cress) 
Many bees were seen gathering pollen from the yellow 
flowers of Solanum rostratum, at Old Mines, Mo., September 
12, 1930 
Entechnia taurea (Say) 
Since writing about these mining-bees in “The Ecology of 
Sheltered .Clay Bank” (Trans Acad. Set St: Louis, 25: 
156-277, 1926) I have seen about a dozen colonies at various 
places in St. Louis County and they always were near streams. 
This of course is what one would expect since they need water 
for excavating purposes. In returning to the clay-bank at 
Wickes, Mo., (where the above ecological study was made) 
after an absence of eight years I was surprised to see the enor- 
mous increase in the population of this bee. In the above work 
I show that for a period of six years, from 1917 to 1922, the 
number of nests in this clay bank was 62, 55, 37, 49, 51 and 
40 respectively, therefore I was delighted to count 198 nests 
with turrets in this same small bank on August 28, 1930. Some- 
thing in the environment, either water or blossoms or lack of 
parasites have given Entechnia taurea an advantage over the 
other mining-bee Anthophora abrupta. The population of the 
latter had greatly decreased while that of taurea more than 
quadrupled in a period of eight years. I plann ned to make an 
intensive study of the populations of both species the following 
year, but when I returned I found the building that sheltered 
* 4] i account a the habits of this bee appears in Bull. Brooklyn 
Ent. Soc. 25: 28-35, 1930. 
