THE RED-TAILED BUMBLE-BEFS NEST. 



[Bombus juxius.) 



In the Rocky Mountains bumble bees 

 are very abundant, especially in the high 

 canons and tablelands. Indeed, you 

 may go up until almost all other wild 

 bees disappear and still the alpine flowers 

 will be visited by hundreds of bumble 

 bees. 



In the beautiful Lapello canon there 

 are hundreds of wlild bees, so many that 

 it would take several pages to- print only 

 their names, and among them are a half 

 dozen species of the bumblebees. The 

 Red-Tailed Bumble is one of the prettiest 

 as well as one of the most abundant. 

 The ones commonly seen at work on the 

 flowers are workers. They are about as 

 long as a good-sized honey bee, but 

 much stouter. The body is black and 

 almost all covered with fuzzy lemon yel- 

 low hair, except near the abdomen tip, 

 where there is a patch of red hair. 



Not long ago I had the good fortune 

 to- find the nest of this bumblebee. It 

 was an irregxilar half sphere, covered 

 with bits of old rope and the tough fibre 

 from plants, and measured about six 

 inches in diameter. The back of the nest 

 was g'lued tO' a log, and at each side there 

 were two entrances and through them the 

 workers hurried in and O'Ut with a puff- 

 ing buzz and when starting seemed to 

 sav, Off for a hard job, O'ff for a hard 

 job ! They all returned well loaded with 

 pollen and honey. The pollen baskets 

 on their legs almost overflowing with 

 green, yellow or orange pollen. 



At last my desire to know what was 

 going on inside the nest conquered, and 

 one rainy day when all the bees were in 

 their nest, I played the robber and thief 

 and raided the small community. 



Under the coarse covering was a finer 

 one made from the same material, and 

 just under this covering and glued to it 

 was a sticky layer made from the gum of 

 plants and trees. This gvtm formed a 



domed shaped roof and a floor for the 

 nest. The cells were built up from the 

 floor, and arranged in giroups so as to 

 allow the bees to pass among them; a 

 space was left all around the cells, ap- 

 parently for the same purpose. The 

 nest was full of bees and cells, and very 

 neat, differing much from the dirty, 

 poorly constructed nests of other species 

 of bumblebees. I counted thirty small 

 bees, workers and males, and there were 

 two queen mothers. 



The queens were fine looking crea- 

 tures, colored like the workers and like 

 them, covered with soft lemon yellow 

 hair on face, thorax and first twO' seg- 

 ments of the abdomen. The tip of the 

 abdomen \yas black and between the black 

 an4 yellow surface was the characteris- 

 tic patch of red hair. The queens were 

 nearly an inch and a half in length, but 

 slender, and very graceful in flight, quite 

 different from the stout, awkward queen 

 mothers of the other species of bumble- 

 bees that I have seen. 



The nest was well stocked with honey ; 

 about twenty cells, which looked some- 

 thing like six grain capsules, made of the 

 same gum as the roof and floor, were 

 uncovered among the broad cells. The 

 brood cells were of various sizes and all 

 covered. When these cells were opened 

 the tiny worm like larva or the white, 

 soft bee like pupa were seen. 



In some of the cells were white worm 

 creatures which nevcT- came from bees' 

 eggs, and in looking about I found the 

 parents feasting on the stores of the bum- 

 blebee while it left its young to eat the 

 food provided for the young bee, or even 

 to eat the bee larva itself. The first of 

 the bees' visitors that I secured was a 

 small brown beetle, irregularly spotted 

 with yellow. Next came a little beetle, 

 hurrying about among the cells and 

 matching them in color. Examined un- 



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