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It is unnecessary for the purpose in hand to quote them all. It will serve our object better if I give the detailed inventory of the Bee-eating Philanthus and of the Mantis-hunting Tachytes, considered especially with regard to the quantity of the victuals. The slayer of Hive-bees is frequently in my neighbourhood; and I can obtain from her with the least trouble the greatest number of data.
"Here another task will begin next month," the doctor observed. "These are salvias, pentstemons, and antirrhinums, or snapdragons, planted very thick for the purpose. Humble-bees bore holes through their base, to save the labor of climbing in and out of the flowers, and we don't quite know yet why some hive-bees discover and utilize these holes at once, while others never do.
At the risk of repeating myself a little, I will relate what I observed during my first investigations. The Cylindrical Halictus works in May. Except among the social species, such as Common Wasps, Bumble-bees, Ants and Hive-bees, it is the rule for each insect that victuals its nests either with honey or game to work by itself at constructing the home of its grubs.
If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. Mr.
That this nectar is much liked by the hive-bee is certain; for I have repeatedly seen, but only in the autumn, many hive-bees sucking the flowers through holes bitten in the base of the tube by humble bees.
The neuter hive-bees have a cavity in their thighs in which to keep the wax, which it is their business to collect; but the drones and queen, which alone bear offspring, collect no wax, and therefore neither want, nor have, any such cavity.
Then, having perfect freedom to go whithersoever we chose and to follow the bees across the boundless fields of ancient literature, we might read of the wild bees and of their honey out of a rock, and of the hive-bees too, in Homer; follow them to their first legendary home in Crete, where the infant Jupiter was fed on honey as a baby's lips are touched with it even unto this day; trace their association with Proserpine and her mother, or their subtler connexion with Ephesian Diana; find in the poets, from Hesiod to the later Anthology, a hundred sweet references to the bee-tree in the oak-wood, to the flowery hill Hymettus.
There is no uncertainty here as to the result, there is no long wait: the moment when she catches sight of the prey in an attitude favourable to her designs, the bandit rushes forward and kills. I will describe how things happen. I place under the bell-glass a Philanthus and two or three Hive-bees.
But the most numerous and interesting of the clay artificers are the workers of a species of social bee, the Melipona fasciculata. The Meliponae in tropical America take the place of the true Apides, to which the European hive-bee belongs, and which are here unknown; they are generally much smaller insects than the hive-bees and have no sting.
The larvæ nimbly take up their position on the thorax, usually on the shoulders or sides, and once there they remain motionless: the second stage of their strange journey is compassed. After the Anthophoræ, I tried the first live insects that I was able to procure at once: Drone-flies, Bluebottles, Hive-bees, small Butterflies. All were alike overrun by the Meloes, without hesitation.
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