ox THE XIDIFICATIOX OF THE PEOSOPIS. 
Bv J. B. Bridgman. 
Read July 29th, 1873. 
The nidification of this little bee has been a partial mystery, for 
not being supplied with polleniferous organs, it was difficult 
to see how it could convey jiollen to its nest. Kirby passes over 
the subject by saying, ‘‘ it has no apparatus for conveying pollen.” 
In his time the history of parasitic or cuckoo bees was not known, 
all he knew of them was that they were caught flying about 
banks ; had he known their history, no doubt he would, as others 
did after him, have given this bee the credit of making one of that 
subdivision.* Since then, Mr. Smith has published his “ Bees of 
Great Britain,” in which he says that “ Mr. Thwaites in 1841 bred 
them from dead bramble sticks, in which they had formed a nest 
in the same regular order as the acknowledged constructive species ; 
that afterwards Mr. Sidney Saunders bred an Albanian species in 
profusion from bramble sticks, which they line with a thin, 
transparent membrane, calculated for holding the semi-liquid honey, 
which they store up for their young.” Mr. Smith afterwards says, 
in the “ Entomologist’s Annual,” that the cells in the brambles are 
like the cells of Colletes, hut without any space between them, 
which the latter generally have. In his book he also says he had 
a nest given him, where the insect had formed its cells in a stone. 
Shuckard says, “ they have usually been considered as parasitical 
insects, and the circumstance of their having been bred from 
brambles is no proof of thffir not being parasitical, for many bees, 
for instance, Ceratina and Heriades, &c., nidificate in bramble 
* I had overlooked a note in the Apum Anglinm, on the “ Melecta punc- 
tata Kirhy'd in which he says, “ ova deponis, uti suspicor, in cellulis Api$ 
retxhsce, Cuculus Apum,” which clearly shews the true history of the cuckoo 
liees had begun to dawn on that very close observer. 
