Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/257

 rufescent hairs, palest on the thighs; underside of the body flavescent. Varieties occur nearly one half smaller than the ordinary length, which often exceeds ten lines.

This is likewise a common bee, not only in Britain, but in most other parts of Europe. It frequents flowers throughout the summer, and is partial to hilly pastures and imperfectly cultivated places. It stores up honey with great assiduity—strenuè mellificans, is Linnæus's expression—and it defends it, as most schoolboys can testify, with no small zeal and pertinacity. Its colonies are not so populous as those of B. terrestris, but they are more so than the associations of B. muscorum. Owing to the great difference in the markings, the male has been mistaken by Fabricius and others for a separate species, which he named B. arbustorum.

MOSS OR CARDER BEE.

(BOMBUS MUSCORUM.)

XVI. Fig. 3.

rather a smaller insect than either of the preceding, although the females sometimes attain the length of ten lines. The general colour of the whole body is pale yellow, the hirsuties rather long; proboscis the length of the thorax, (it is represented in the accompanying fig. with the parts extended and