334 Beautiful Exotic Bees. 



BEAUTIFUL EXOTIC BEES. 



BY H. NOEL HUMPHREYS. 



As will be seen by the species represented in the accompanying 

 plate, some of the exotic bees are almost as richly coloured as 

 the more gaudy butterfly tribe, and at the same time are of 

 such conspicuous size as must render them very remarkable 

 objects, winging their rapid and always musical passage among 

 the exuberant vegetation of the tropics. A thoughtful spec- 

 tator seeing for the first time in their native wilds these gigantic 

 and magnificently tinted bees, robbing the nectaries of tropic 

 flowers of sweets whose mere perfume seems almost too delicious, 

 could scarcely forbear picturing to himself the produce of un- 

 known kinds of honey, of a luscious sweetness and exquisite 

 flavour, as yet undreamed of. If, (he might reflect) those mean 

 little plants of wild thyme, trailing their humble stems among 

 the scanty herbage of our bleak northern hills, can yield deli- 

 cious honey to that poor little brown gatherer, the old hive 

 bee, what may one naturally expect to be the result of honey- 

 gathering by such a noble race of bees as these of the tropics, 

 and with such exquisite flowers to gather from ! Such might 

 easily be conceived tb be the exclamation of an observer of the 

 flight of bees among the gorgeous plants in one of the natural 

 gardens of some intertropical valley ; and he would think of 

 those bees mentioned by Amer which make natural hives of 

 the cavities of rocks, laying up honey in large pouches, or cells, 

 of the size of a pigeon's egg, and which being dark coloured, 

 and hanging to the sides of the hive in clusters, look like 

 bunches of delicious grapes, containing, in fact, a juice far more 

 sweet :* he might think also of what Clavigero, the Spanish 

 historian of Mexico, says of a bee, evidently of a nearly allied 

 species, which abounds in Tucatan, and produces the famous 

 honey of Estabentiem, the finest in the world, which is said to 

 be taken from the bees every two months. These bees are, 

 however, small inconspicuous creatures, evidently belonging to 

 the same group as our own honey hive-bee, though distin- 

 guished from it by being stingless. 



The most magnificent bees are, on the other hand, not of 

 the true honey kind. They belong principally to the class of 

 solitary bees, including a few of the humble-bee class and their 

 relatives. These last, though it is true that many of them 

 of the " social" kinds do collect honey, yet manipulate it 

 in a very inferior manner to that of the hive-bee. Other 

 kinds only collect pollen, which being exclusively intended as 



* In wild hives of this kind, Captain Basil Hall found comb of the usual size 

 made as cells for the larvae. 



