British Bees / An Introduction into the Studies of the Natural History and Economy of the Bees Indigenous to the British Isles

by William Edward Shuckard

Although the division into social and solitary yields in itself no tangible character whereby the insects may be separated, it being wholly empirical, yet is it so natural and necessary that it is impossible to gainsay it. We find the solitary section readily resolve itself into groups or subsections, determined by positive structural characters, indicative of certain habits, and having a conforming economy, besides which they are equivalents.

Thus the first subsection presents us with the brush-legged Apidæ (Scopulipedes), which collect pollen upon their posterior legs. These are further subdivided into those which collect it upon the whole limb, viz. the coxa, the femur, the tibia, and first joint of the tarsus, (the femoriferæ), and those which gather it merely upon the shank and basal joint of the foot (the cruriferæ). These collectively form a well-defined group, and why Panurgus should be separated from the brush-legged bees, when it is a most conspicuous instance of the faculty, even more so than any other of the Scopulipedes, I have yet to learn. It is true its mode of collecting closely resembles that practised by the Andrenidæ, as does also the furniture for the purpose of its posterior legs, but being essentially collocated with the Apidæ or normal bees by its tongue, it fittingly links itself to the other brush-legged Apidæ (which have hitherto been placed between the Dasygasters and the Social Bees), by means of the genus Eucera, by reason of its two submarginal cells, the structure of its maxillary palpi, its mode of burrowing, and by each being infested by a similar parasite—a Nomada, which in accommodation to the size of the sitos is the largest of the genus. Nomada does not occur as a parasite upon any other of the brush-legged bees, or indeed upon any other of the true bees at all, which peculiarity brings these two genera into close contiguity to all non-parasitical Andrenidæ, all of which have their legs furnished with polliniferous brushes, and upon which subfamily, exclusively of these two instances of Panurgus and Eucera, Nomada is solely parasitical.

With respect to the two submarginal cells to the wings, nature must have some reason for the limitation, for we find it prevalent also throughout the Dasygasters, or hairy-bellied bees.

The next very natural group is consistently central. It comprises the cuckoo-bees, which are naked-legged (Nudipedes), by reason of their parasitism, they not requiring organs to collect what they have no occasion to use. Their parasitism extends both upwards and downwards, those with three submarginal cells being parasitical upon all the brush-legged bees, whether subnormal Andrenidæ or the Scopulipedes, those with two submarginal cells being restricted in their parasitism to the Dasygasters.

These Dasygasters, or hairy-bellied bees, form the next very natural group. Their general peculiarity of structure I have had occasion to advert to, in treating, in a former section of the work, upon the structure of the imago, and to which I now refer to avoid repetition. This group contains the majority of the artisan bees, whose habits I shall particularize when I speak of the genera specially; but we find carpenters amongst the Scopulipedes, and essentially builders amongst the Cenobites, which form a further and the last of our natural groups. A true cuckoo-bee (Apathus) consorts amongst these Cenobites, and properly so, from many causes. The anomaly would have been too great to have removed it to a place amongst the Nudipedes, for although in obsolete paraglossæ, and in a deficiency in the normal number of the joints of the maxillary palpi, it resembles some of these, its general habit and general structure, bating that controlled by its parasitical habits, are so like Bombus, that it cannot well be separated far from the latter,—especially as we know too little of its habits to say that it does not regularly dwell in the nest of its sitos, which may well mistake it for one of its own community, it resembling the species it infests so closely; it therefore consistently associates systematically with the temporarily social societies.

Having thus cursorily skimmed the surface of the method I suggest, I have next to give my reasons for proposing it in lieu of adopting any yet extant.

My exhibition of Kirby’s grouping, in the preceding section, where I treat of the scientific cultivation of British bees, will fully explain why I could not adopt that arrangement.

Why I cannot follow Latreille’s, is, that in his last elaboration, in his ‘Families Naturelles,’ published in 1825, which must be considered as his final view, he does not satisfactorily divide the Andrenidæ, of the genera of which he has made a complete jumble. With the Apidæ in his group of Dasygasters, he intermixes Ceratina, separating it from the group of Scopulipedes, where it truly belongs by every characteristic, and he mingles also with them the two cuckoo genera Stelis and Cœlioxys, which are merely parasites upon these Dasygasters, and can only be associated by the structural conformity of the two submarginal cells to the superior wings, and the length of the labrum, the latter being a character of very secondary importance; and further, he dissevers the Scopulipedes in placing Panurgus at the commencement of the Apidæ, and the rest proximate to the social bees.

Westwood, in his modification of Latreille’s system, certainly divides the Andrenidæ better than his master had done, but he does not go far enough. Besides, he interposes Halictus and Lasioglossum, (the latter admitted as a genus merely out of courtesy to Curtis, who had elevated it to that rank in his ‘British Entomology,’ although it is nothing more than a male Halictus), between Sphecodes and Andrena with Cilissa, these having lanceolate tongues with lacerate paraglossæ, whereas Halictus has a very acute tongue, and its paraglossæ are entire, as is also the case with Dasypoda, from which Halictus is thus divided. In the Apidæ, he does not separate the cuckoo-bees, but with Latreille intermixes Cœlioxys and Stelis with the artisan bees, although without retaining Latreille’s convenient and suitable name of Dasygasters, for this group of mechanics. The same objection I take to his Scopulipedes as that expressed above, relative to Latreille’s.

Precisely the same fault I find with the Andrenidæ of Smith, as that urged above with respect to Westwood’s. He is more careful with his Apidæ, his Cuculinæ being all genuine parasites, but he includes Ceratina with the Dasygasters, with which it has no affinity of structure, and only a slight analogy in the form merely of its abdomen without its hairiness beneath, to that of Osmia, from whose proximity he takes it to place it near Heriades, when it is certainly intimately allied in every respect with the Scopulipedes, and by reason of its subclavate antennæ might suitably be brought into juxtaposition with Panurgus, did not its obsolete paraglossæ and three submarginal cells interfere with its occupying this position. To his Scopulipedes the same objection is valid as that taken to Latreille’s and Westwood’s disposition of them. Amongst the social bees he separates Bombus from Apis, by the intervention of Apathus, which is scarcely consistent.