CREATION BY EVOLUTION
honey-pot, which now falls into decay, and they store in the papery cocoons they have vacated the honey they have themselves collected, strengthening the edges with wax.
Some species of bumble-bees construct special honey-pots of their own, as many as twenty or more in a hive. These contain a very watery syrup, which is eaten up daily, but the honey in the cocoons is thicker and seems to be used to feed the younger queens. A few species make special receptacles for the pollen, which is mixed with honey. The comb made by these species is irregular and rough compared with that of the honey-bee, which shows mathematical rigidity. It is placed on the basal irregular waxen layer of vacated cocoons, on which also are placed cells containing larvae and pupae. Sometimes the whole comb may be covered by a waxen dome, but there is always room left for the bumble-bees to circulate. These bees have evidently an acute sense of smell, and human breath is particularly distasteful to them. They are almost as clever as honey-bees in their power of scenting out nectar and, owing to the length of the tongue, a bumble-bee can probe flowers to reach nectar that lies beyond the reach of the honey-bee. The bumble-bee fertilizes the honeysuckle, the horehound, and the red clover, whose introduction into New Zealand proved a failure until bumble-bees were brought in to fertilize it.
The hive of the bumble-bee is kept up for only three or four months. But the inmates are very busy; in fact, they work themselves to death. They begin foraging earlier in the morning than the honey-bee and they continue foraging till dusk. They spend the night in attending the young and brooding over the cocoons, for they never sleep. After laying from 200 to 400 eggs and slaving to bring up her progeny, the queen, as the season closes, begins to lay special eggs that are destined to turn into males and fertile females.
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