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CHAPTER IV.

CARDER-BEES; HUMBLE-BEES; SOCIAL-WASPS.

THE bees and wasps, whose ingenious architecture we have already examined, are solitary in their labours. Those we are about to describe live in society. The perfection of the social state among this class of insects is certainly that of the hive-bees. They are the inhabitants of a large city, where the arts are carried to a higher excellence than in small districts, enjoying little communication of intelliBut the bees of the villages, if we may follow up the parallel, are not without their interest. are those which are called carder-bees and humblebees.

gence.

CARDER-BEES.

Such

The nests of the bees which Réaumur denominates carders (Bombus muscorum, LATR.) are by no means uncommon, and are well worth the study of the naturalist. During the hay harvest, they are frequently met with by mowers in the open fields and meadows; but they may sometimes be discovered in hedge-banks, the borders of copses, or among mossgrown stones. The description of the mode of building adopted by this bee has been copied by most of our writers on insects from Réaumur; though he is not a little severe on those who write, without having ever had a single nest in their possession. We have been able to avoid such a reproach; for we have now before

us a very complete nest of carder-bees, which differs from those described by Réaumur, in being made, not of moss, but withered grass. With this exception, we find that his account agrees accurately with our own observations*.

The carder-bees select for their nest a shallow excavation about half a foot in diameter; but when they cannot find one to suit their purpose, they undertake the Herculean task of digging one themselves. They cover this hollow with a dome of moss-sometimes, as we have ascertained, of withered grass. They make use, indeed, of whatever materials may be within their reach; for they do not attempt to bring any thing from a distance, not even when they are deprived of the greater portion by an experimental naturalist. Their only method of transporting materials to the building is by pushing them along the ground-the bee, for that purpose, working backwards, with its head turned from the nest. If there is only one bee engaged in this labour, as usually happens in the early spring, when a nest is founded by a solitary female who has outlived the winter, she transports her little bundles of moss or grass by successive backward pushes, till she gets them home.

In the latter part of the season, when the hive is populous and can afford more hands, there is an ingenious division of this labour. A file of bees, to the number sometimes of half a dozen, is established, from the nest to the moss or grass which they intend to use, the heads of all the file of bees being turned from the nest and towards the material. The last bee of the file lays hold of some of the moss with her mandibles, disentangles it from the rest, and having carded it with her fore-legs into a sort of felt or small bundle, she pushes it under her body to the

* J. R.

next bee, who passes it in the same manner to the next, and so on till it is brought to the border of the nest, in the same way as we sometimes see sugarloaves conveyed from a cart to a warehouse, by a file of porters throwing them from one to another.

The elevation of the dome, which is all built from the interior, is from four to six inches above the level of the field. Beside the moss or grass, they frequently employ coarse wax to form the ceiling of the vault, for the purpose of keeping out rain, and

preventing high winds from destroying it. Before this finishing is given to the nest, we have remarked, that on a fine sunshiny day, the upper portion of the dome was opened to the extent of more than an inch, in order, we suppose, to forward the hatching of the eggs in the interior; but on the approach of night this was carefully covered in again. It was remarkable that the opening which we have just mentioned was never used by the bees for either their entrance or their exit from the nest, though they were all at work there, and, of course, would have found it the readiest and easiest passage. But they invariably made their exit and their entrance through the covert-way or gallery which opens at the bottom of the nest, and, in some nests, is about a foot long and half an inch wide. This is, no doubt, intended for concealment, from field-mice, polecats, wasps, and other depredators.

On removing a portion of the dome and bringing the interior of the structure into view, we find little of the architectural regularity so conspicuous in the combs of a common bee-hive; instead of this symmetry, there are only a few egg-shaped, dark-coloured cells, placed somewhat irregularly, but approaching more to the horizontal than to the vertical position, and connected together with small amorphous * columns of brown wax. Sometimes there are two or three of these oval cells placed one above another, without anything to unite them.

These cells are not, however, the workmanship of the old bees, but of their young grubs, who spin them when they are about to change into nymphs. But, from these cases, when they are spun, the enclosed insects have no means of escaping, and they depend for their liberation on the old bees gnawing

* Shape ess.

off the covering, as is done also by ants in the same circumstances. The instinct with which they know the precise time when it is proper to do this is truly wonderful. It is no less so, that these cocoons are by no means useless when thus untenanted, for they absequently serve for honey-pots, and are indeed the only store-cells in the nest. For this purpose the edge of the cell is repaired and strengthened with a ring of wax.

The true breeding-cells are contained in several amorphous masses of brown-coloured wax, varying in dimensions, but of a somewhat flat and globular shape. On opening any of these, a number of eggs or grubs are found, on whose account the mother bee has collected the masses of wax, which also contain a supply of pollen moistened with honey, for their subsistence.

The number of eggs or grubs found in one spheroid of wax varies from three to thirty, and the bees in a whole nest seldom exceed sixty. There are three sizes of bees, of which the females are the largest; but neither these nor the males are, as in the case of the hive-bee, exempt from labour. The females, indeed, always found the nests, since they alone survive the winter, all the rest perishing with cold. In each nest, also, are several females, that live in harmony together.