166 LITTLE FOLKS 
like good little bees, as they are. With their help, the house is 
made larger, and then lots more of the grubs are hatched, until 
before Fall, the hard-working little mother has often two or three 
hundred children in her house. 
The Bombus belongs to the family of social Bees, called so 
because many of them live in one house. 
Another of the family is called the Stone Humble Bee, because 
she prefers to build under stones. 
Still another is the Moss Humble Bee. She finds or makes a 
little hollow in the ground, over which she builds a roof of moss or 
grass. It is shaped like a tiny hut, and lined with wax, to keep out 
rain. You can see it in the picture, with Madam Bombus just 
going in. 
All these Bees have the little baskets on their hind legs, and 
the way they fill them is to go into the flower and twist about till 
they are covered with pollen, and then carefully brush it off with the 
brushes they have on their legs, and pile it up in the baskets. 
There is another larger family of Bees called Solitary Bees, 
because each one lives alone. Some of them select curious places 
for their nests. Some bore tunnels in wood ; others take out the 
pith of bramble-sticks ; still others, called Leaf-Cutters, line their 
nests with pieces of rose leaves, which they cut out themselves. 
But the oddest home of all is made in an empty snail shell. 
The Bee mother lays an egg in the farthest corner of the shell, 
puts in the pollen and honey for food, and then builds a partition 
wall. 
Then comes another egg and stock of food, and another wall, 
and so on till it is full, when she makes a firm wall. When the 
little ones are ready to come out, they bite their way through the 
walls. 
All this is about Wild Bees. If I should try to tell you about 
the ways of Hive Bees, it would take a whole book to do it. 
The man who has found out the most about the ways of Bees, 
was Peter Huber, and he was blind from the. age of seventeen. 
See what can be done, in spite of unfavorable circumstances, by a 
determined will. 
