IHE BEE. 



finished bee-bnrrow been discovered. Keaumer, however, de- 

 clares that the humble is under obligations to no other animal, 

 or to chance, for her home, but that she is her own digger and 

 delver, using her jaws to dislodge the particles of earth, which 

 are then, by means of the anterior pair of legs, passed back- 

 wards to the hinder pair, which perform the same office ; and, 

 as the burrow becomes deeper, the whole body is used to eject 

 the grains of soil. The burrow consists of a tortuous gallery, 

 terminated by an arched chamber of considerable dimensions, 

 and in this chamber the nest is fixed. Our knowledge of the 

 behaviour of the bee-mother, all alone and soUtary in her dark 

 house, is very limited. According to the most reliable authori- 

 ties, however, the mother forms a ball of pollen and honey, in 

 which the eggs, numbering from three to thirty, are inclosed. 

 When these eggs are hatched, the larvae feed on the walls of 

 their prison, the kind mother making good its part as her 

 hungry children eat it thin ; and so the process continues until 

 the prisoners grow strong enough to. insist on release. When 

 the larvae are full-grown, each one incloses itself in a silken 

 cocoon of an oval form, and placed always in a perpendicular 

 position. A certain number of neuters, or workers, having 

 undergone their final transformation, the nest is enlarged, and 

 an inner coating of wax is attached to it ; and in those nests 

 which are constructed with moss the particles of wax are so 

 amalgamated with it that a portion of the moss cannot be 

 removed without injuring the interior more or less. Wax is 

 also used by the workers in the construction of little cells for 

 the reception of honey. Each species of humble-bee, as Huber 

 informs us, makes these cells in a different manner : some con- 

 struct them on the top of the cocoon, and of a half-oval form ; 

 others build them of an egg-shape, with the apex truncated. 

 In some, again, they resemble the first, but have a ring of war 

 within the top. The next variety is almost a perfect oval, 

 having but a small opening at the apex. 



As an instance of the intelligence of these bees, Huber 

 remarks, that when bees are prevented from obtaining tho 

 honey at the bottom of the flower by the tube of the ooroUa being 

 too narrow and deep, they driU a hole with their proboscis 

 through the calyx and corolla right into the tube, and so tap 

 the vessel containing the golden fluid. 



