598 THE HOME OF THE BEES. 
drena vicina. On the 4th of May the bees were seen dig- 
ging their holes, most of which were already two inches 
deep, and one six inches. The mounds of earth were so 
small as to be hardly noticed. At this time an Oil-beetle 
(Meloé) was seen prowling about the holes. The presence 
of this dire foe of Andrena at this time, it will be seen in a 
succeeding paper on the enemies of the bees, is quite sig- 
nificant. By the fifteenth of May hundreds of Andrena 
holes were found in various parts of the pasture, and at 
one place, in a previous season, there were about two hun- 
dred found placed within a small area. One cell was dug 
up, but it contained no pollen. Four days later, several 
Andrenas were noticed resting from their toil at the open- 
ing of their burrows. On the twenty-eighth of May, in un- 
earthing six holes, eight cells were found to contain pollen, 
and in two of them a small larva. The pellets of pollen 
are about the size of a pea. They are hard and round 
at first, before the young has hatched, but as the larva 
grows the mass becomes softer and more pasty, so that 
the larva buries its head in the mass, and greedily sucks 
it in. When is the pollen gathered by the bee and 
kneeded into the pellet-like mass? On June 4th, a cell 
was opened in which was a bee busily engaged prepar- 
ing the pollen, which was loosely and irregularly piled 
up, while there was a larva in an adjoining cell nearly 
half an inch long. It would seem, then, that the bee 
comes in from the fields laden with her stores of pollen, 
which she elaborates into bee-bread within her cell. 
When the bee returns to her cell she does not directly 
fly towards the entrance, since, as was noticed in 4 
particular instance, she flew about for a long time in 
all directions without any apparent aim, until she finally 
settled near the hole, and walked into her subterranean 
