BENEFICIAL INSECTS 243 



they learned their new location and accepted it without difficulty. 

 One other observer has told me of catching a queen bumblebee early 

 in the spring, taming her by feeding with honey, and inducing her to 

 accept a nest he had provided in a large bottle. He was thus able 

 to watch the colony from beginning to end. 



Bumblebees are valuable insects, aside from the interest 

 attaching to the study of them, from the work they per- 

 form in the fertilization of flowers, especially red clover. 

 Greenhouse men, who raise melons, cucumbers, and toma- 

 toes under glass, are obliged to keep swarms of honeybees 

 to carry the pollen from flower to flower. But honeybees 

 do not live long under such confinement and hence must 

 be replaced by fresh hives perhaps once or twice a year. 

 It has been suggested that bumblebees might do this 

 work fully as well at little or no expense. To try the 

 experiment it would only be necessary to catch a few 

 queens as late in the fall as possible and confine them 

 in the greenhouse, supplying them with field-mice nests. 

 What boy will try this plan and report results .■* 



Other near relatives of the honeybees are the wasps and 

 hornets, and here again we have hundreds of different spe- 

 cies, some social, like the bumblebees, and many solitary. 

 Most of these make burrows in the ground, like the digger 

 bees, but they provide as food for their young, instead of 

 pollen and honey, insects, spiders, etc., stung with such 

 care and precision that they are paralyzed but not killed. 

 The common mud wasp, or mud dauber, is very easily 

 studied and will serve, if time permits, to initiate the 

 children into the mysteries of this fascinating group. ^ 



1 George W. and Elizabeth G. Peckham, " On the Instincts and Habits 

 of the Solitary Wasps, " Bulletin No, 2, Wisconsin Geological and Natural 



