248 
BRITISH BEES. 
is very long, and the quantity of pollen required for the 
nurture of the larva is evidently small, from its having 
been observed that the store upon which the egg is de¬ 
posited is semiliquid, thus preponderating in the admix¬ 
ture of honey. 
That it has not been caught laden with pollen upon 
its legs has no weight against the fact of its non-para¬ 
sitism, for it is not always that the excursions of bees 
are made for the purpose of collecting pollen. Honey 
is as necessary to their economy—and in this case per¬ 
haps more so—as pollen, and the only way to determine 
the fact of its carrying pollen, corroboratively, would 
be when knowing that one of these bees has visited a 
bramble stick—its presumptive nidus,—to watch the 
stick very patiently for the insect’s return from every 
journey until it came back laden; the presence of 
pollen upon its legs would surely be indicated by the 
difference of its colour from the ordinary dark hue of 
the little labourer. 
We have already noticed bees with metallic hues 
among the Halicti , and there are slight indications of it 
in some of the Andrence , for instance, in the A. cinerea 
and the A. nigro-csnea , etc., but in none hitherto so 
absolutely is it exhibited as in this genus. The preva¬ 
lent colour of the bees, that is to say, the ground colour 
of the integument, and not the fleeting one of the pu¬ 
bescence, is black or brown, but here we have a positive 
metallic tinge, which we shall again come across in 
many shades and hues in the genus Osmia. 
A second species of the genus was brought from 
Devonshire by Dr. Leach, and is in the collection of the 
British Museum, but no other specimens of the same 
species have since been found. 
