ANIMAL COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL LIFE {61 
ing from the main or public entrance burrow. As a well- 
known entomologist has said, Andrena builds villages com- 
posed of individual homes, while Halictus makes cities 
composed of apartment houses. The bumble-bee (Fig. 96), 
however, establishes a real community with a truly com- 
munal life, although a very simple one. The few bumble- 
bees which we see in winter time are queens; all other 
bumble-bees die in the autumn. In the spring a queen 
selects some deserted nest of a field-mouse, or a hole in 
the ground, gathers pollen which she molds into a rather 
large irregular mass and puts into 
the hole, and lays a few eggs on the 
pollen mass. The young grubs or 
larvee which soon hatch feed on the 
pollen, grow, pupate, and issue as 
workers—winged bees a little small- 
er than the queen. These workers 
bring more pollen, enlarge the nest, 
and make irregular cells in the pol- 
len mass, in each of which the queen 
lays an egg. She gathers no more 
pollen, does no more work except 
that of egg-laying. From these new 
eggs are produced more workers, and 
so on until the community may come 
to be pretty large. Later in the sum- 
mer males and females are produced 
and mate. With the approach of 
winter all the workers and males die, 
leaving only the fertilized females, 
the queens, to live through the win- Fre. 96.—Bumble-bees. a, 
ter and ‘found new communities in fprker , queen or fer 
the spring. 
The social wasps show a communal life like that of the 
bumble-bees. The only yellow-jackets and hornets that 
live through the winter are fertilized females or queens. 
12 
