244 Guests Welcome and Unwelcome 



are too small to be serviceable to large blossoms. 

 We have already mentioned how humble-bees bite 

 through the tube of the jessamine, because they find 

 nothing to stand upon while they suck the blossom. 

 But as the jessamine is a foreign flower, this may be 

 thought excusable enough, as there are few insects 

 here able to reach the nectar in the right way. 



But some bees really seem to be lazily inclined to 

 save time and trouble, for they always bite a hole in 

 the columbine, among others. 



The bladder campion, however, successfully frus- 

 trates any such designs by growing a calyx which is so 

 inflated that no bee's proboscis is long enough to reach 

 the nectar by means of a hole made in it. Others 

 have calyxes so hard and tough that even humble-bees 

 and ants are baffled by them. 



But, then, the little bees — where big bees can enter, 

 why not little ones ? The foxglove, for instance, 

 gapes widely open; and as stamens and pistil lie 

 close under the upper side of the blossom, they are 

 quite out of the way of the small bee, which would 

 pass in and out without touching them, if it were 

 allowed to find entrance at all. But an observer who 

 watched the flowers carefully throughout a season in 

 North Wales, where they especially abound, saw many 

 small bees make the attempt but only one succeed 

 the whole time. It looks easy enough, but the upper 

 part of the blossom is so smooth as to be actually 

 slippery, and affords no foothold ; and the lower part 

 is beset with stiff hairs, which are very embarrassing 

 to smaller insects, though the humble-bee uses them 

 as rests for her feet and clings to them while she 

 sucks. 



