70 
which have formed a rather large colony in the palings by my 
garden.* 
From the above observations, I think we may conclude that 
these bees form their nest in any suitable situation, whether 
in soft wood or earth, not even despising ready formed holes. At 
the bottom of one of the cells in the bramble sticks, I found a 
hard half-round pellet of some yellow substance, which, under the 
microscope, turned out to be a mass of regular oval shaped pellets, 
closely and carefully packed together, evidently of pollen and 
honey mixed, each pellet covered with the same gold-beater’ s-skin- 
like secretion. FJ ow, as the bee has no special organs for collecting 
pollen, I fancy it must have collected and carried it home in its 
mouth, after working it up into a pellet. The bee had either 
forgotten to lay its egg, or the egg had died ; it does not matter to 
us much which, but it has enabled me to state that this bee does 
collect pollen, like almost, and perhaps all other constructive bees. 
* Since the above was written, I have discovered another proof of this 
being a constructive bee. In the cells of CoUetes some are opaque red, and 
others transparent white ; it struck me the opaque ones contained the Col- 
letes, and the transparent ones the parasite Epeolus variecjatus, so I sepa- 
rated the remainder of my unhatched cells, to see if it were so, when, to my 
surprise, amongst the Epeolus hatched from the transparent cells, I found 
a female Frosopis, and on hunting over the empty cells to see where she 
came from, I found an appropriated cell of CoUetes, in which the little bee, 
finding the cell as it was too large for its purpose, had, rather than fill it up 
to what it wanted, divided the cell from side to side, not straight across, but 
in a slanting direction, and by this means, with as small an amount of labour 
as possible, out of one old cell constructed two, which admirably served its 
purpose ; in the further cell of the two thus formed is the dead larva. 
