3. Have you ever seen the little black bee carrying pieces of rose leaves between her front feet? With what instrument do you suppose she cut the leaves? Where do you think she was going?

4. Have you ever found the nest of the leaf-cutter bee? Was it in a tunnel made in dead wood or in some crack or cranny? How many of the little rose leaf cups are there in it? How are the cups placed? Are the little bees still in the cups or can you see the holes through which they crawled out?

5. Take one cup and study it carefully. How are the pieces of leaves folded to make the cups? How is the lid put on? Soak the cup in water until it comes apart easily. Describe how many of the long pieces were used and how they were bent to make a cup. Of how many thicknesses is the cover made? Are the covers just the same size or a little larger than the top of the cup? How does the cover fit so tightly?

6. If you find the nest in July or early August, examine one of the cups carefully and see what there is in it. Take off the cover without injuring it. What is at the bottom of the nest? Is there an insect within it? How does it look? What is it doing? Of what do you think its food was made? How and by whom was the food placed in the cup? Place the nest in a box or jar with mosquito netting over the top, and put it out of doors in a safe and shaded place. Look at it often and see what this insect changes into.

7. If the mother bee made each little nest cup and put in the beebread, and honey for her young, which cup contains the oldest of the family? Which the youngest? How do you think the full-grown bees get out of the cup?

8. Do you think that the same species of bee always cuts the same sized holes in a leaf? Is it the same species which cuts the rose leaves and the pansy petals?

THE LITTLE CARPENTER-BEE

Teacher's Story

AKE a dozen dead twigs from almost any sumac or elder, split them lengthwise, and you will find in at least one or two of them, a little tunnel down the center where the pith once was. In the month of June or July, this narrow tunnel is made into an insect apartment house, one little creature in each apartment, partitioned off from the one above and the one below. The nature of this partition reveals to us whether the occupants are bees or wasps; if it is made of tiny chips, like fine sawdust glued together, a bee made it and there are little bees in the cells; if it is made of bits of sand or mud glued together, a wasp was the architect and young wasps are the inhabitants. Also, if the food in the cells is pollen paste, it was placed there by a bee; if of paralyzed insects or spiders, a wasp made the nest.

The little carpenter-bee (Ceratina dupla) is a beautiful creature, scarcely one quarter of an inch in length, with metallic blue body and

The little car

the bottom and

rainbow tinted wings. In May, she selects some broken twig of sumac, elder or raspberry, which gives her access to the pith; this she at once begins to dig out, mouthful by mouth.. ful, until she has made a smooth tunnel several inches long; she then gathers pollen and packs bee-bread in the bottom of the cell to the depth of a quarter-inch, and then lays upon it, a tiny white egg. She then brings back some of her chips of pith and glues them together, making a partition about onetenth of an inch thick, which she fastens firmly to the sides of the tunnel; this is the roof for the first cell and the floor of the next one; she then gathers more pollen, lays another egg, and builds another partition.

Thus she fills the tunnel, almost to the opening, with cells, sometimes as many as fourteen; but she always leaves a space for a vestibule near the door, and in this she makes her home while her family below her are growing up.

The egg in the lowest cell of course hatches first; a little bee grub issues from it and eats the bee-bread industriously and grows by shedding his skin when it becomes too tight; then he changes to a pupa and later to a bee resembling his mother. But, though fully grown, he cannot get out into the penter-bee; her sunshine, for all his younger brothers and sisters are blocking nest, cut open, the tunnel ahead of him; so he simply tears down the partition showing the above him and kicks the little pieces of it behind him, and bides eldest larva at his time until the next youngest brother tears down the parthe youngest tition above his head and pushes its fragments behind him nearest the en- into the very face of the elder which, in turn, performs a similar act; and thus, while he is waiting, he is kept more or less busy pushing behind him the broken bits of all the partitions above him. Finally, the youngest gets his growth, and there they all are in the tunnel, the broken partitions behind the hindmost at the bottom of the nest, and the young bees packed closely together in a row with heads toward the door. When we find the nest at this period, we know the mother because her head is toward her young ones and her back to the door. A little later, on some bright morning, they all come out into the sunshine and flit about on gauzy, rainbow wings, a very happy family, out of prison.

trance.

But if the brood is a late one, the home must be cleaned out and used as a winter nest, and still the loyal little mother bee stays true to her post; she is the last one to enter the nest; and not until they are all housed within, does she enter. It is easy to distinguish her for her poor wings are torn and frayed with her long labor of building the nest, until they scarcely serve to carry her afield; but despite this she remains on guard over her brood, for which she has worn out her own life.

Nest of carpenter-wasp.
Comstock's Manual.

The story of the little carpenter-wasps is similar to that of the bee, except that we have reason to believe they often use her abandoned tunnels instead of making new ones They make their little partitions out of mud; their pupæ are always in long, slender, silken cocoons, and we have no evidence that the mother remains in attendance.

LESSON CI

THE LITTLE CARPENTER-BEE

Leading thought-Not all bees live in colonies like the honey-bees and bumblebees. One tiny bee rears her brood within a tunnel which she makes in the pith of sumac, elder or raspberry.

Method-This lesson may be given in June or in October. In June, the whole family of bees in their apartments may be observed; in autumn, the empty tenement with the fragments of the partitions still clinging may be readily found and examined; and sometimes a whole family may be found, stowed away in the home tunnel, for the winter.

Observations-1. Collect dead twigs of sumac or elder and cut them in half, lengthwise. Do you find any with the pith tunneled out?

2 How long is the tunnel? Are its sides smooth? Can you see the partitions which divide the long narrow tunnel into cells? Look at the partitions with a lens, if necessary, to determine whether they are made of tiny bits of wood or of mud. If made of mud, what insect made them? If of little chips how and by what were they constructed?

3. Are there any insects in the cells? If so, describe them. Is there bee-bread in the cells?

4. For what was the tunnel made? With what tools was it made? How are the partitions fastened together? How does a young bee look?

5. Write the story of the oldest of the bee family which lived in this tunnel. Why did it hatch first? On what did it feed? When it became a full fledged bee, what did it do? How did it finally get out?

6 Take a glass tube, the hollow at the center being about one-eighth of an inch across, a tube which you can get in any drug-store. Break this tube into sections, six or seven inches long, wrap around each a black paper or cloth, made fast with rubber bands and suspend them in a hedge or among thick bushes in May. Examine these tubes each week to see if the wasps or bees are using them.

Supplementary reading-"The Story We Love Best," in Ways of the Six-footed, Comstock.

Nest of large carpenter-wasp Comstock's Manual.

THE BUMBLEBEE

Teacher's Story

Thou, in sunny solitudes,
Rover of the underwoods,
The green silence dost replace
With thy mellow, breezy bass.

-EMERSON.

HERE seems to have been an hereditary war between the farm boy and the bumblebee, the hostilities usually initiated by the boy. Like many wars, it is very foolish and wicked, and has resulted in great harm to both parties. Luckily, the boys of to-day are more enlightened; and it is to be hoped that they will learn to endure a bee sting or two for the sake of protecting these diminishing hosts, upon which so many flowers depend for carrying their pollen; for of all the insects of the field, the bumblebees are the best and most needed friends of the flowers.

The bumblebees are not so thrifty and forehanded as are the honeybees, and do not provide enough honey to sustain the whole colony during the winter. Only the mother bees, or queens as they are called, survive the cold season. Just how they do it, we do not know, but probably they are better nourished and therefore have more endurance than the workers. In early May, one of the most delightful of spring visitants is one of these great buzzing queens, flying low over the freshening meadows, trying to find a suitable place for her nest; and the farmer or fruit grower who knows his business, is as anxious as she that she find suitable quarters, knowing well that she and her children will render him most efficient aid in growing his fruit and seed. She finally selects some cosy place, very likely a deserted nest of the field mouse, and there begins to build her home. She toils early and late, gathering pollen and nectar from the blossoms of the orchard and other flowers which she makes into a special kind of bee-bread, by mixing it with nectar. This is packed in an irregular mass and on it she lays a few eggs; each little bee grub, as soon as it hatches, burrows into the bee-bread, making a little cave for itself while satisfying its appetite. After it is fully grown, it spins about itself a cocoon and changes to a pupa, and later emerges a full-fledged worker bumblebee, being scarcely more than half as large as her queen mother. These workers or daughters of the family find full satisfaction in life in attending to the wants of the growing family. They gather more pollen and mix it with honey, making larger masses for the young to burrow in; meanwhile, the queen remains at home and devotes her energies to laying eggs for the enlargement of the colony. The workers not only care for the young, but later they strengthen the silken pupa cradles with wax, and thus make them into cells for storing honey. When we understand that the cells in the bumblebee's nest are simply made by the young bees burrowing in any direction, we can understand why the bumblebee comb is so disorderly in the arrangement of its cells. Perhaps the boy of the farm would find the rank bumblebee honey less like the ambrosia of the gods, if he knew that it was stored in the deserted cradles and swaddling clothes of the bumblebee grubs.

All of the eggs in the bumblebee nest in the spring and early summer develop into workers which do incidentally the vast labor of carrying pollen for thousands of flowers; to these only is granted the privilege of carrying the pollen for the red clover, since the tongues of the other bees are not sufficiently long to reach the nectar. The red clover does not produce seed in sufficient quantity to be a profitable crop, unless there are bumblebees to pollinate its blossoms. Late in the summer, queens and drones are developed in the bumblebee nest, the drones, as with the honey-bees, being mates for the queens. But of all the numerous population of the bumblebee nest, only the queens survive the rigors of winter, and on them and their success depends the future of the bumblebee species.

There are many species of bumblebees, some much smaller than others, but they all have the thorax covered with plush above and the abdomen hairy, and their fur is usually marked in various patterns of pale yellow and black. The bumblebee of whatever species, has short but very active antennæ and a mouth fitted for biting as well as for sucking. Between the large compound eyes are three simple eyes. The wings are four in number and strong; the front legs are very short; all the legs have hairs over them and end in a three-jointed foot, tipped by a claw. On the hind leg, the tibia and the first tarsal joint are enlarged, making the pollen baskets on which the pollen is heaped in golden masses. One of the most interesting observations possible to make, is to note how the bumblebee brushes the pollen from her fur and packs it into her pollen baskets.