Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/478

 458 BEE as many as 300. The larvae live in society until they are about to change into nymphs, when each spins a silken cocoon in which the oc- cupant is placed head downward, and from which it comes out in four or five days during May and June. The females assist in building the cells, and deposit at the first laying eggs both of males and females ; the males are not reared till late in the season, and like the hive drones do not assist in the care of the young. Several females may live in peace under the same roof; impregnation takes place outside the nest. The honey and wax are of the same origin and nature as those of the honey bee. As they do not hibernate, but perish during the winter, the same nest is not occupied for two successive years. The nest of the species called carder bee (B. muscorum, Latr.) is composed of a dome of moss or withered grass placed over a shallow excavation in the ground of about half a foot in diameter ; the materials, after being carded by means of the mandibles and fore legs, are pushed by the first bee backward to a second, which passes it to a third, and so on until the nest is reached ; they work in long files, the head being turned away from the nest, and toward the material. Their domes are often seen rising 4 or 6 inches above the level of the fields and meadows ; the en- trance is at the bottom, about a foot long and half an inch wide. The carder bee is smaller than the terrestrial humblebee, and shorter and thicker than the honey bee ; it resembles in color the materials of the nest, having the fore part of the back a dull orange, and the hind part with different shades of grayish yel- low rings. The lapidary bee (B. lapidarius, Latr.) builds its nest in a heap of stones, of bits of moss, neajly arranged in an oval form ; they are social in their habits, and collect honey with great industry ; the individuals of a nest are more numerous than the carders, and much more vindictive. III. Solitary Bes display as much foresight, ingenuity, and skill in the construc- tion of their nests as do the social species, and perhaps in a more remarkable manner, as a single individual begins and finishes every part of the work. There are only two kinds of indi- viduals, males and females ; the males are idle, and the females perform all the labor of mak- ing the nest and providing food for the young ; they have no brush to their hinder feet and no basket structure on the external side of the tarsi. Different species of megachile, antho- phora, and osmia, have been called by Reaumur mason bees, from their constructing their nests with sand, earthy substances, and sometimes wood, cemented with a glutinous secretion ; they build in the interstices of brick walls, in crevices in stones, and wherever they can find a suitable place, often amid the busiest throngs of men. Within a wall of clay they make from one to six chambers, each containing a mass of pollen with an egg ; the cells are sometimes parallel and perpendicular, at others with vari- ous inclinations, and are closed with a paste of earth ; they are thimble-shaped, and about an inch long. Many species, not larger than a horse fly, have been called mining bees (an- drenai), from their digging in the ground tubular Mason Bee and Kent galleries, a little wider than the diameter of their bodies ; they are fond of clay banks, in which their holes, of the size of the stem of a tobacco pipe, are frequently seen ; they are 6 or 8 inches deep, smooth and circular, with a thimble-shaped horizontal chamber, almost at right angles to the entrance, and nearly twice as wide ; in this is placed a single grub with its supply of pollen. There are several British species of solitary bees to which Reaumur has given the name of carpenter bees, from their working in wood as the mason bees do in earth ; Carpenter Bee and Nest. they select posts and the woodwork of houses which have become soft from commencing de- cay. The violet-colored species (xylocopa vio- lated, Linn.) makes her nest by gnawing out