HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



423 



an oval mass full two feet in diameter. When broken, the 

 wax is arranged as in our hives, and the honey abundant.^ 



Humble-bees are the only tribe besides the hive-bee, that in 

 this part of the world construct nests by the united Hbour of 

 the society. The habitations composing them are of a rude 

 construction, and the streets are arranged with little architec- 

 tural regularity. The number of inhabitants, too, is small, 

 rarely exceeding two or three hundred, and often not more 

 than twenty. The nests of some species, as of Bombus'^ la- 

 pidarius, terrestris, 8fc., are found underground, at the depth of 

 a foot or more below the surface ; but as the internal structure 

 of these does not essentially dilFer from that of the more sin- 

 gular habitations of B. muscorum, and as some of the sub- 

 terranean species occasionally adopt the same situation, I shall 

 confine my description to the latter. 



These nests, which do not exceed six or eight inches in di- 

 ameter, are generally found in meadows and pastures, and 

 sometimes in hedge-rows where the soil is entangled with 

 roots. The lower half occupies a cavity in the soil, either ac- 

 cidentally found ready made, or excavated with great labour 

 by the bees. The upper part or dome of the nest is composed 

 of a thick felted covering of moss, having the interior ceiling 

 coated with a thin roof of coarse wax for the purpose of keep- 

 ing out the wet. The entrance is in the lower part, and is 

 generally through a gallery or covered way, sometimes more 

 than a foot in length and half an inch in diameter, by means of 

 which the nest is more effectually concealed from observation. 

 On removing the coping of moss, the interior presents to our 

 view a very different scene from that witnessed in a bee-hive. 

 Instead of numerous vertical combs of wax, we see merely a 

 few irregular horizontal combs j)laced one above the other, 

 the uppermost resting upon the more elevated parts of the 

 lower, and connected together by small pillars of wax. Each 

 of these combs consists of several groups of pale-yellow oval 

 bodies of three different sizes, those in the middle being the 

 largest, closely joined to each other, and each group con- 



1 Lindley in R. Military Chronicle, March 1815, 449. 



2 Apis. **. e. 2. K. 



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