224 Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 
have been already recorded.* In addition to unusual nesting 
places I want to record the nest of this bee in my own barn. 
This was on the floor in the corner of a dark closet and about 
15 feet distant from the big door which was always open. The 
bumble-bees came and went through this door, but could only 
enter the closet through a small hole in the wall near the floor. 
I do not know how the queen discovered this spot unless she 
found it a good place for hibernating during the winter, and 
then remained to found her colony in the spring. This made 
an ideal nesting site because on the floor near this hole was 
an abandoned mouse’s nest which with its mass of dry grass, 
small chips of wood and bits of newspaper gave ready-made 
nesting material. It was interesting to see that the queen did 
honey pots half-way in between the mass so that a portion served 
as a floor and another portion the roof. This colony never 
reached large proportions however; I doubt if the population 
contained more than twenty workers even in late summer. 
There are two other details of behavior that interested me 
about the few bumble-bees that came into my back yard; one 
was that queens of this species were often seen at the flowers 
late in the spring, when the workers also appeared. One sus- 
pects that when workers were on hand to do the foraging, the 
queen would remain in the nest and in termite-fashion revert 
to an egg-laying machine. Both queens and workers of this 
species were seen on the flowers in 1934 as late as June 16 and in 
1931 I noticed queens at the flowers as late as June 28. The other 
item of interest is that often a heavily pollen-laden worker or 
queen goes into a flower to gather nectar; several observations 
have convinced me that this species does not exclusively gather 
one or the other crop on ee one foraging trip, but often on 
one trip gathers both product 
- Workers of americanorum were seen gathering pollen or 
nectar from the following flowers: Japanese honey suckle, 
Lonicera japonica; blue and pink larkspur, Delphinium sie 
blue flowering myrtle, Vinca minor; peste tongue, Penstemon 
sp.; pink weigelia, Diervilla hort. var.; white dutzia, rehies 
hort. var.; bouncing bet, Saponaria officinalis; iron weed, 
Veronia sp.; dewberry, Rubus sp.; yellow flowering solanium, 
Solanium rostratum; scarlet lobelia, Lobelia siphilicta. They were 
also seen foraging among the common garden plants as follows: 
pink and white hardy sweet peas, yellow Japanese iris and zennia. 
passe Ent. Meee 29: 14, 1918; and Raz, Ann. Ent. Soc 
7: 308-381, I 
