NEW TYPE OF BEE.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 696, 3 January 1922, Page 5

NEW TYPE OF BEE.

DISCOVERY IN ENGLAND. .

From England if is reported! that a new type off bee, black, and of large proportions, had been found in Hertfordshire, by Mr Harold A. Geldabd, on a farm at Hunton Bridge. Both the .insect and the nest are curious, and have never been found in England before. The bee is common all round the Mediterranean, but its previous * most, northerly range was Bonn, Germany. It is also known in Central Asia and Africa. Last July a trickling of fine sawdust was noticed coming from a hole in an old fence post, and on the 'insertion of a blade of grass out tumbled) what looked like. a huge black beetle. It was afterwards identified as a new specimen at South Kensington Museum, to which the nest and the bee have just been presented It is named Xylocopa violaca L., or violet Carpenter Bee. It is more than l%in, across the wings when they are outstretched, and from head to tail a little less than an inch long. The colour of the bee is its most remarkable feature. Its legs and its body are jet black. The membranous wings have a splendid violet iridescence, and glisten when turned to the light reflecting in their brightness glittering hues of copper on a rich violet. It leads a solitary existence. The queen bee alone bores into softened wood for nesting purposes, and will cut several passages more than a foot long. The passages are divided into c’ells, by means of > particles of sawdust, cemented together with saliva of the bee, and placed to form a partition across the passage. Each cell is stored) With a quantity of food consisting of pollen grains made into paste with honey. An egg is laid near the food before the cell is finally sealed up. Eventually the yeggs hatch into grubs, which remain within the

cells feeding upon the pollen paste until they become full grown. They then turn into chrysalides, and remain thus until the following spring, when they emerge as full grown adult bees. Bees are not long-dis-tance fliers, and rarely travel more than a few miles fr.om the locality where they first see light. How then did this carpeneter bee travel from i- ? native place, which may be from 300 to 1000 miles awaav, to the localitv where it was discovered ;