7016 Insects. 



or end of October under straw hives. The bees and combs should 

 have some moss placed round them. Each of the nests contains from 

 ten to one hundred bees. I have seen them in the moors in Scotland, 

 about the middle of August, with one old queen and only four or five 

 workers. The moss carders are the most hardy of all the English 

 wild bees ; they will brave the wind and rain in very tempestuous 

 weather without being benumbed as most of the other species are. 



B. terrestris. The workers of this species vary exceedingly in size ; 

 some of them are very small. The males generally appear about the 

 third week in July ; the females make their appearance very early in 

 March. This bee is extremely like its congener, B. Lucorum, in colour 

 and appearance, and has nearly the same flight ; but the males of B. 

 terrestris are very like the workers, with a slight, difference in the 

 antennae and the lower part of the abdomen. I dug out a nest of these 

 insects on the tram-road on the Gloucester Road, near Cheltenham, 

 the middle of July, 1859, containing about three hundred workers, and 

 the combs contained about fifty males and a few queens unhatched. 

 They worked from a box in my garden for about six weeks ; a good 

 many young queens were hatched and worked well, but the males 

 that hatched were extremely weak, most of them unable to fly, and the 

 few which did fly never returned to the box. The passage to the 

 combs from the entrance of the original nest was about three feet, and 

 the combs were about eight inches or a foot from the surface of the 

 ground. The workers were extremely irascible and acted offensively 

 when near the combs, fastening occasionally on ray clothes, in my 

 hair, &c. This is the only species of Bombus, the nest of which I 

 have ever found inhabited by the great black cuckoo bee, Apathus 

 rupestris. This species is extremely fond of the lime blossom ; in a 

 showery summer, when these blossoms are out, I have seen these 

 bees remain on them till long after sunset, and many of them, about 

 the end of June or beginning of July, lying dormant under these trees 

 on the ground, as if inebriated. I have taken hundreds of their nests 

 containing a good deal of wild honey, in different parts of England 

 and in Scotland. The males have the same habits as those of B. 

 Lucorum, but I never found any bee, either male or female, of the latter 

 species, in the nest of B. terrestris. These bees are also very fond of 

 the Dutch clover [Trifolium repens), and Mr. Huish denounces^ them 

 as great enemies of the hive bees in consequence, but he was not 

 aware how few of the genus interfered in their pasture with the hive 

 bee. The difference I have always found between the flight of the 

 males and workers when removed to a new place is this, that on letting 



