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True Bees — Part 6

The study of the life of a colony of bumblebees will be found to be a very interesting one, especially if observations are made upon the parasites and guest insects, or inquilines, which are frequently found in these nests. Many interesting points as to unimportant habits, especially as they bear upon the question of inherited instinct or intelligence, may be observed in this way. For example, these bees are very cleanly in their habits. Their faeces are always deposited in a particular place outside the nest.

Some of the guest bees frequently found in bumblebee nests belong to the genus Apathus, or Psithyrus, as it is now called. These bees resemble bumblebees so closely that it is difficult to distinguish between them and they live apparently in perfect harmony with bumblebees, but are lazy and use the food of the industrious bumblebees, both when adult and when in the larval condition. Bumblebees resent the introduction of one of these guest bees into their nest, but the intruder seems to have very pleasant manners for the alarm and resentment occasioned by his or her presence soon dies away and an amicable relationship succeeds. Whether the guest bee and its larvae consume so much food (they undoubtedly bring in some themselves) that they endanger the health of the colony of bumblebees is a disputed point. The old idea was that they ate so much that the young bumblebees were starved to death, and it was upon this supposition that the writer in his youth wrote the following lines which perhaps will be accepted rather on account of their aptness to the present topic than on account of their rhythmical merit:

Oh! an Apathus sat on a Chrysanthemum

A-cleaning her antennae,

And she little thought of the Pyrethrum

That would take her life away!

And there she sat, a-taking a rest,

And smiled in a satisfied way,

For she'd laid ten eggs in a Bombus nest

And there'd soon be the de'il to pay.

For her offspring dear, her very first brood,

Would hatch in a very short time,

And no trouble she'd have a storing up food,

For she worked on the Cuckoo line.

Her young would hatch ere the young bumblebees,

And the young bumblebees would die,

When the young Apathi would live at their ease

And fatten like pigs in a sty!

So she sat in the sun, this wicked old bee,

And scratched her tibiae,

And chuckled inside in lazy glee

At the business she'd done that day.

But the Chrysanthemum on which she sat

Belonged to a neat old maid,

Whose plants were her pride (next to her cat),

And that day she was out on a raid

Against Aphids and slugs, with a Buhach-gun

Filled with Peters & Milco's best,

And seeing the Apathus, just for fun,

She dusted her yellow vest.

How the cheat kicked as she fell on the ground!

And how she did buzz and hum!

But she never got well--she never "came round"--

Her fraudulent life was done.

From this little tale can a moral be drawn--

How the bumblebee loafs not a bit;

But works all day from the earliest dawn,

And thus 'scaped the death dealing hit?

This moral is good, but please don't forget

Those eggs that the Apathus hid!

The Bombus is working and slaving yet,

But it's all for the other one's kid!