DISEASES AND ENEMIES. 
577 
a tablsepoonful of honey is, of course, a mere fable. 
The bees would be able to prevent her entrance, but 
she is capable of emitting a stridulating note like 
that of the queen (page 157), which seems to terrify 
the inhabitants of the hive. They generally close 
with the enemy, however, after a time, and then 
every scale (feather) of the moth is pulled out, 
causing it to change its appearance in a most 
remarkable manner. I have a specimen from a hive 
near Lowestoft, which most persons would be unable 
to imagine could have been a moth at all. That 
Fig. 124.— Braula c^ca. 
A, Braula (Natural size). B, Male Ditto, Magnified 18 diameters. C, Foot of 
Braula (Magnified 80 diameters)— t. Teeth ; p, p, Pulvilli. 
point is, however, settled by the nervures of the 
wings. The moth is very rarely found in hives, but 
the caterpillar is not uncommon on the leaves of the 
potato, and is extremely large. 
The Braula cseca (A, Fig. 124) is a small, reddish- 
brown, wingless louse, parasitic on the bee, and of 
relatively large size, being about in. long. It is 
most generally found on imported bees, and rarely 
survives a winter in Britain. I found them, however, 
two years since, many hundreds strong, in each of 
several colonies of black bees, at Orpington, which I 
VOL. II. 2 P 
