INSECTS AS PARASITES 193 
(Anthophora) that make underground nests, storing each cell 
with honey, and then laying an egg therein. In early autumn 
the female beetle lays her numerous eggs (as many as 2000) 
near the openings of bees’ nests, and these hatch out into minute 
six-legged larve, which hibernate till the following spring. After 
the winter-sleep is over these little creatures hold on to any hair- 
clad insects that pass sufficiently near, and are thus carried away. 
Only those which have by good fortune attached themselves to 
the right sort of bee have any chance of surviving, and a great 
many are undoubtedly transported by unsuitable insects, merely 
to die. Hence in all probability the 
reason for the production of so many eggs. 
Some of the successful larvee unconsciously 
select female bees as carriers, but most 
appear to attach themselves to drones, 
whence they transfer themselves to in- 
dividuals of the opposite sex. When one 
of these female bees lays an egg in a 
honey-filled cell, a predatory larva im- 
mediately transfers itself to the egg, and 
the bee roofs in the cell. To fall into the 
honey would be fatal to the larva, but it 
stands firmly on the floating egg, and thus) 
avoids this danger. This scene in the ge 
drama lasts for eight days, the larva. (ee? Oe mee 
being busily employed eating up the 
nutritious contents of the egg. Moulting now takes place, and 
the once active robber is transformed into a plump grub with 
breathing-holes (stigmata) placed in the upper part of its body, 
so that it can float in the honey without fear of suffocation. The 
sweet food-supply is exhausted in about forty days, by which time 
it is mid-July, and the grub next becomes a motionless false-pupa, 
but without shedding its skin, which remains as a dry covering to 
the body. The further stages in the life-history may follow im- 
mediately, but are usually postponed till the following spring, after 
a long winter-sleep. In either case the false-pupa assumes once 
more the form of a grub, the skin, however, being retained as 
a second dry investment. In about two days the grub becomes a 
true pupa, from which the perfect insect emerges a month later. 
Some other Oil-Beetles (species of J7e/o¢) have much the same 
Vou. IV. 107 
