TIE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVEK. 



APRIL, 1863. 



BEES AND THEIR COUNTERFEITS; OR, BEES, 

 CUCKOO-BEES, AND ELY-BEES. 



BY H. NOEL HUMPHREYS. 



No insect is so well known to our unentomological public as 

 the hive-bee of North- Western Europe. All the habits, pecu- 

 liarities, and interesting social arrangements of this insect have 

 been popularized in a series of works, the public appetite for 

 which never seems satiated, and so, new volumes upon this 

 never-failing theme, always possessing more or less merit, are 

 continually issuing from the press ; but although the natural 

 history of our common hive-bee (Apis mellifica) has been thus 

 rendered so familiar, the other members of the bee family have 

 found but few popular historians, and less is generally known 

 about them — except to entomologists — than about other far 

 less interesting insect families. 



Yet there are many interesting peculiarities connected with 

 different species of the bee tribe which would amply repay the 

 cost of a little study. I may, therefore, within the limits of the 

 present paper, call attention to a few remarkable kinds of Bri- 

 tish and foreign bees, more especially with reference to certain 

 extraordinary resemblances which exist between some of the 

 honey-collecting kinds and those belonging to the parasitic or 

 cuckoo class ; which will lead to the notice of still more curious 

 resemblances that exist between bees and certain insects be- 

 longing to a distinct order, Dvptera. These last, though only 

 furnished with two wings, while the bees and the whole order 

 (Hymenoptera) to which they belong have four, yet bear such a 

 striking resemblance to the bees, in company with which they 

 are found, that an untrained observer would not, at all events 

 on a first glance, perceive the existing difference. 



The bee family was termed by the great French naturalist, 



LatreiUe, Mellifera (honey gatherers), or Antlwphila (flower 



lovers), both terms being characteristic of the general habits of 



the family. One of the most remarkable features in those kinds 



VOL. i. — NO. III. n 



