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Updated: June 9, 2025


Many other Hymenoptera, honey-gatherers or hunters, are quite as spiritless; and I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the Common Wasps and the Bumble-bees, know how to devise a common defence; and only they dare fall singly upon the aggressor, to wreak an individual vengeance.

Now and again humble-bees go by with a burr; and it is curious to see the largest of them all, the big bombus, hanging to the little green gooseberry blossom. Hive-bees, too, are abroad with every stray gleam of sun; and perhaps now and then a drone-fly last seen on the blossoms of the ivy in November.

Here, where the ground slopes gradually, it is entirely covered with the purple bells; a sheen and gleam of purple light plays upon it. A fragrance of sweet honey floats up from the flowers where grey hive-bees are busy.

The plant seldom sets seed in this vicinity, but seems to depend rather upon its tuber-like rootstocks in which the leaves lie curled all through the winter. The hepatica attracts pollen-feeding flies, female hive-bees and the earliest butterflies, and is thus cross-fertilized to some extent; but it is thought also to be able to effect self-fertilization.

It was thus that I reared the Tarsal Bembex, which eats Anthrax-flies and other Diptera, on young Locustidae or Mantidae; the Silky Ammophila, whose diet consists chiefly of Measuring-worms, on small Spiders; the pot-making Pelopaeus, a Spider-eater, on tender Acridians; the Sand Cerceris, a passionate lover of Weevils, on Halicti; the Bee-eating Philanthus, which feeds exclusively on Hive-bees, on Eristales and other Flies.

He was oblivious of the fact that they were Reddin's bees. Reddin presented them. 'There, he said gruffly; 'now you can be civil again. 'But these be hive-bees! said Hazel, 'and they was comforble to begin with! I dunna want that sort. I wanted miserable uns! 'Hang it! how could I know? asked Reddin irritably. 'No. I suppose you couldna, said Hazel; 'you'm terrible stupid, Jack Reddin!

The difference in the length of the corolla in the two kinds of clover, which determines the visits of the hive-bee, must be very trifling; for I have been assured that when red clover has been mown, the flowers of the second crop are somewhat smaller, and that these are visited by many hive-bees.

On the other hand, as the fertility of this clover absolutely depends on bees visiting the flowers, if humble-bees were to become rare in any country, it might be a great advantage to the plant to have a shorter or more deeply divided corolla, so that the hive-bees should be enabled to suck its flowers.

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