428 



THE ANIMALS AND MAN 



cells, when she leads them off, and each begins active life 

 on its own account. The mining bees Andrena, which 

 make little burrows in a clay bank, live in large colonies— 

 that is, they make their nest burrows close 

 together in the same clay bank, but each 

 female makes her own burrow, lays her own 

 eggs in it, furnishes it with food — a kind of 

 paste of nectar and pollen — and takes no 

 further care of her young. Nor has she at 

 any time any special interest in her neighbors. 

 But with the smaller mining bees, belonging 

 to the genus Halictus, several females unite 

 in making a common burrow, after which 

 each female makes side passages of her own, 

 extending from the main or public entrance 

 burrow. As a well-known entomologist has 

 said, Andrena builds villages composed of 

 individual homes, while Halictus makes cities 

 composed of apartment houses (fig. 217). The 

 bumblebee, however, establishes a real commu- 

 nity with a truly communal life, although a very 

 simple one. The few bumblebees which we 

 see in winter time are queens; all other bum- 

 blebees 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 

 carpenter lays a few eggs on the pollen mass. The 

 bee. (Natural young grubs or larvas which soon hatch feed 

 on the pollen, grow, pupate, and issue as 

 workers — -winged bees a little smaller than the queen. 



These bring more pollen, enlarge the nest (fig. 218), and 

 make irregular cells in the pollen mass, in each of which 

 the queen lays an egg. She gathers no more pollen, does 



Fig. 216. Nest 

 tunnel of a 



