462 INSECTA. 



are often in part destroyed ; but towards the latter end of the season, 

 the queens and males are becoming predominant in number. 



Food. — I believe the humble-bee is the cleanest feeder of the whole 

 tribe ; for I have observed the common bee on meat. Their food, I 

 should suppose, was in general honey. However, I have found in the 

 crop, stomach, and intestines, as also in the rectum, a yellow substance 

 like farina. From its being in the rectum, one would imagine that the 

 substance was not digested, but only what was expressed from it, as 

 perhaps it is in most if not in all caterpillars. The honey found in the 

 pods of the chrysalis is not exactly like the honey of the common bee ; 

 I think it is rather darker. This difference may be owing to this bee 

 collecting its honey from a much greater variety of flowers : for they can, 

 and I believe do, collect it from every flower that the common bee 

 does ; they can likewise collect it from flowers that the common bee 

 cannot, where it requires a much longer tongue ; besides, I have seen 

 them collecting from where the common bee might, yet, I believe, does 

 not, get honey, viz. the foxglove. They seem very partial to the fox- 

 glove and the sunflower. 



Through the summer they find their food at large : I believe the 

 females only lay up a small store for a wet day, and the males only take 

 their daily subsistence, which is in great plenty, for at this time their 

 crops are to be found full of honey. About the beginning of August 

 they are enlarging their cells from whence the young queens have 

 emerged; that is, they are making them somewhat deeper, with, I 

 should imagine, farina mixed probably with a little wax, and likewise 

 with some other juice of vegetables, and then filling many of them with 

 hone} T , and covering them over with the same as the above ; but not as 

 a provision for the winter, but for the months of September and October 

 only, when they give up all food. They are also at this time laying up 

 large portions of farina in which there are no eggs. Whether this is to 

 be considered as food I do not know. 



The Hive-Bee [Apis mellifica 1 , Linn.]. 



The common bee lays its egg in an empty cell. The egg is very 

 small. The time when this egg hatches is not easily ascertained; but 

 when hatched, it sticks with one end to the cell at the bottom, and is 

 fed by the [labourer] bees till it arrives at its full growth. When it is 

 large, it lays in the direction of the cell with the mouth towards the 



1 [The major part of Hunter's observations on the liive-bee was communicated by 

 him, in the year 1792, to the Royal Society, and the Paper appeared in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for that year. See also 'Animal Economy,' 8vo. 1837, p. 422.] 



