PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 389 



Spun its cocoon and assumed the pupa, the workers remove all the wax 

 from il ; and as soon as it has atlaingd to its perfect state, which takes 

 place in about five days, the cocoons are used to hold honey or pollen. 

 When the bees discharge the honey into them upon their return from their 

 excursions, they open their mouths and contract their bodies, which occa- 

 sions the honey to fall into the reservoir. Sixty of these honey-pots are 

 occasionally found in a single nest, and more than forty are sometimes 

 filled in a day. In collecting honey, humble-bees, if they cannot get at 

 that contained in any flower by its natural opening, will often make an 

 aperture at the base of the corolla, or even in the calyx, that they may 

 insert their proboscis in the very place where nature has stored up her 

 nectar.^ M. Huber relates a singular anecdote of some hive-bees paying 

 a visit to a nest of humble-bees placed under a box not far from their hive, 



' Hub. Nouv. Ohserv. ii. 375. Of the especial love of humble-bees for the nectar of the 

 Passion-flower {Pussijiora cxruha), and the effect which it has on them, the following para- 

 graph gives a graphic description. 



" We regret exceedingly to announce, that some honest humble-bees of onr acquaintance 

 have taken to drinking, and to such excess that they are daily found reeling and tumbling 

 about the door of their houses of call — the blossoms of the Passion-flower, which flow over 

 with intoxicating beverage ; and there, not content with drinking like decent bees, they 

 plunge their great hairy heads into the beautiful goblet that nature has formed in such 

 plants, thrusting each other aside, or climbing over each other's shoulders, till the flowers 

 bend beneath their weight. After a time they become so stupid that it is in vain to pull 

 them by the skirts, and advise them to go home, instead of wasting their time in tippling : 

 they are, however, good-natured in their cups, and show no resentment at being disturbed ; 

 on the contrary, they cling to their wine goblet, and crawl back to it as fast as they are 

 pulled away, unless, indeed, they fairly lose their legs and tumble down, in which case they 

 lie sprawling on the ground, quite unable to get up again." (^Gardener's Chronicle, 1841, p. 

 519.) If this account be not over-colored these jovial, reckless proceedings of humble-bees 

 are in strong contrast with the temperate habits of hive-bees, which, to judge from the 

 interesting account Mr. Wailes has given us of their visits to his Passion-flowers {Ent. 

 Mag. i. 525.), hurried back to the hive as soon as they had imbibed their supply of nectar ; 

 and certainly the anecdote given below, from Huber, of the way in which humble-bees suf- 

 fered themselves to be cajoled out of their honey by hive-bees indicates such a good-natured 

 weakness of disposition as may easily be supposed to be combined with a propensity to 

 carousing when the opportunity presents itself. To speak seriously, however, it would be 

 well worth ascertaining, by exact observations, whether as great a contrast between the 

 temperance of humble-bees and hive-bees in feeding really exists, as between their easiness 

 of temper. There can be no doubt that some races of insects vary as much in this last 

 respect as some races of men. The difference as to irritability between the temper of wasps 

 and that of bees is known to every one, but has never been so happily hit off as by Chris- 

 topher North, whose universal genius adorns every subject, in the description of it, which 

 he has put into the mouth of the " Shepherd," in one of the Nodes, and which well deserves 

 transcription here from the pages of the voluminous periodical in which it has lain entombed 

 these sixteen years. 



•' Shepherd — 0' a' God's creturs the wasp is the only aue that's eternally out o' temper. 

 There's nae sic thing as pleasin' him. In the gracious sunshine, .... when the bees are 

 at work murmurin' in their gauzy flight, although no gauze indeed be comparable to the 

 Alaments o' their woven wings, or, clinging silently to the flowers, sook, sookin' out the 

 hiney-dew, till their verra doups dirl wi' delight, — when a' the flees that are ephemeral, 

 and weel contented wi' the licht and the heato' ae single sun, keep dancin' in their burnished 

 beauty, up and down, to and fro, ami backwards and forwards, and sideways, in millions 

 upon millions, and yet are never joistling anither, but a' harmoniously blended together in 

 amity, like imagination's thochts, — why.amid this ' general dance of minstrelsy,' in comes a 

 shower o' infuriated wasps, red het, as if let out o' a tiery furnace, pickin' quarrels wi' their 

 ain shadows — then roun and roun the hair o' your head, bizzin' against the drum o' your ear 

 till you think they are in at the ae hole and out at the ither — back again after makin' a circuit, 

 as if they had repentit o' lettin' you be unharmed, dashin' against the face o' you who are 

 wishin' ill to nae livin' thing, and although you are engaged out to dinner, stickin' a lang poi- 

 shoned stang in just below your ee, that afore you can rin hame frae the garden swell up to a 

 fearsome hicht, makin' you on that side look like a blackamoor, and on the opposite white 

 as death, sae intolerable is the agony frae the tail o' the yellow imp that, according to his 

 bulk, is stronger far than the dragon o' the desert." (Blackwood's Edinburgh Mag. Oct. 1826.) 



33* 



