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Perhaps some of your readers may like to hear a few more particulars about the Humble-bees boring holes in flowers & thus extract the nectar. This operation has been performed on a large scale in the Zoological Gardens:

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If any of your London readers have been interested by the account in a late number of your periodical of the Humble-bees boring holes on bean-flowers in order to extract the nectar. They will perhaps be glad to know that they see this ingenious operation has been performed on many flowers at the Zoological Gardens.

There are two beds near the Reflection House of Stachys coccinea & Penstemon argutus which are both frequented by very many Humble Bees; These fly from flower to flower must

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Near the Refection house there is a fine bed of Stachys coccinea, every flower in which has one & sometimes two small irregular slits or orifices on the upper side of the corolla near its base. I observed some plants of Marvel of Peru & of Salvia coccinea with holes in to similar positions; but in Saliva Grahami they were without exception cut through the calyx, which is in this species elongated. The tubular corolla of Penstemon argutus is rather broader than in the above flowers, & two holes are always bored in it, by the side of each other, & just above the calyx -- all these orifices are so small that they might be easily overlooked; I first noticed them a week since, when from the brown colour of their edges they appeared to have been made sometime before. The beds of Stachys & Penstemon are frequented by numerous Humble Bees of many very different kinds; at one moment I saw between twenty & thirty round a bed of the latter flower: they fly very quickly from flower to flower & always alight with their heads just over the little orifices into which they most dexterously insert their proboscis, and in the case of the Penstemon first into the orifice on one side & then into the other, so that they thus extract the nectar on both sides its germen

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Besides the Humble bees, I saw some Hive Bees on the Penstemon; they were however much less dexterous & generally alighted across the flower or on the calyx, & thus lost some time. The orifices in all the above mentioned flowers are made on the upper side of the corolla, I was, therefore, surprised to find close by a large bed of the common Antirrhinum, in which all the flowers had one or two irregular slits or holes on the underside of the corolla, at its base, close to the small protuberance which represents the spur in Linaria, & therefore directly in front of the nectary at the foot of the germen. From the position these orifices they cannot be seen without turning up the flowers but the Humble-bees, seemed to understand this

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method of picking pockets full as well as the other & never hesitated where to go, but quickly flew from the under side of one flower to that of another. Now I can speak positively as far as the experience of part of two summers goes, that country Humble-bees are not so cunning & invariably crawl into the flower by forcing open the elastic lower lip; & a very pretty spectacle it is to watch them.

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All the flowers of Salvia Grahami & the Antirrhinum which I looked at in different parts of the garden, were bored; & out of the many hundreds in bloom in the two large beds of Stachys & Penstemon, I could not find one without its little orifice, nor did I see one Bee crawl in at the mouth. Nevertheless I found & the fact appears to me very curious two separate plants of the Stachys coccinea & one large one of the Penstemon argutus with all their flowers unbored; from the scratches on the lower lip of the flowers of two former plants I have no doubt many Bees had entered by the usual way & I actually saw one Bee crawling into the flowers of the Penstemon. One is tempted to conjecture that in these separate plants, each Humble Bee, as it came, not finding a hole ready cut, thought it less trouble to extract the nectar by the mouth then to make one, but that on the beds of these same flowers, where very many Bees were rivalling each other in getting honey, some few set to work boring holes & others copied the example. From the comparative fewness of the Hive Bees on the Penstemon, their evident awkwardness in finding the orifices, & the smallness their mandibles, I can hardly doubt they were profiting by the workmanship & the

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Although in the beds of the Stachys & Penstemon I could not find one flower in

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example of the Humble Bees: should this be verified, it will I think be a very instructive case of acquired knowledge in insects: We should be justly astonished did one genus of monkeys adapt from another some particular manner of opening hard-shelled fruit, how much more so ought we to be in a tribe of insects, so preeminent for their instinctive faculties which are generally supposed to be in inverse ratio to the intellectual. Moreover, from what I have above stated regarding the Antirrhinum I much suspect that the practice of boring holes in its flowers is likewise a piece of a acquired knowledge, whether or not the Humble bees may do it instinctively in some cases it is, perhaps, worthy of notice that all flowers, with one exception which have as yet been found bored are of foreign origin.

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(Although I have said that country Humble Bees appear to be less cunning than London ones yet I confess I saw this June in Staffordshire some in the act of cutting holes at the base of the corolla of the Rhododendron azaloides: the greater number entered the mouth of the corolla, as indeed was evident from the quantity of pollen on the stigma, brought by the bees from neighbouring Azaleas, this hybrid not having a single grain of pollen of its own. One Bee was seen, which entered the mouth of some of the flowers, & cut holes in others: thus shows that the orifice is made simply to save trouble, & not because the bee can not extract the nectar from the long tube.

In the Stachys & Penstemon it is also, evident that the Bees cut the holes, because they can fly much quicker from the upper surface of one flower to that of another, than clamber in on the fringed eye of the lower lip: I have no doubt by this means they are able to visit twice the number of flowers in the same time. Your correspondent (p 485) says that the Honeysuckle is sometimes bored, I never happened to notice this, but I have seen pollen-gathering humble Bees show much skill in forcing open the yet closed mouth of the young flowers & extracting the pollen: flowers which had been opened apparently even for a day, they at once passed over; whereas the

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nectar-seeking humble-bees stopped at them: of the mouth of the flower was absolutely alone, without any one segment having started, the Bees from its difficulty of the attempt, immediately gave it up.

[Pointing hand sketch:] (N.B this passage is not to be left out)

(Your correspondent attributes this failure of his Bean crop to the apertures made by the Bees; but when we remember how the petals of many flowers may be manifested, in hybridising them without preventing their fruitification, we may well doubt this view. But I can conceive they may be indirectly the cause of the crop, failing, not by making the orifice, but by their not extracting the nectar in this manner nature intended; for I have observed that when papilionaceous flowers are mature (& actually in the case of the Bean) Bees slightly on the wing-petal, (as they always do to reach the nectary at the base of the standard-petal) depress the wings together with the keel, by which movement the pollen together with the stigma are forced out, & both rubbed against one side of the bee's body, already generally well dusted with the pollen of other flowers of the same species. If all flowers even hermaphrodite ones which are attractive to insects, almost necessarily require their interventions as is supposed with much probability by Christian Spengel (Entd. Geheim.) to remove the pollen from the anthers to the stigma, what unworthy members of society are

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these Humble Bees, thus to cheat by boring a hole into the flower, instead of brushing over the stamens & pistol so imagined, find cause of their existence! Although I can believe that such wicked Bees may be injurious to the seedsman, one would lament to see such industrious happy-looking creatures, punished with the severity proposed by your correspondent. Moreover the florist, I believe, ought rather to praise them for this ingenious method of obtaining the nectar, instead of by the old fashioned natural one, for let him look how torn, & scratched the lower petals of some flowers are, for instance those of the Mimulus rosea & the wing-petals of some everlasting Peas. The little orifice of which the Bees make in order to around clambering in at the mouth is hardly visible, whereas all the flowers in same bed of the Mimulus at the Zoological Gardens are sadly defaced. Let anyone who doubts the use of Bees in the fruitification of hermaphrodite flowers watch & admire the manner in which the flat surface of the divided stigma of this Mimulus licks the back of entering Bees, which is generally well dusted already with pollen; & then how admirably the two divisions of the stigma, endowed with a sensitive faculty close like a forceps on the included granules of pollen!

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I will only further remark that after the facts here noticed, one may well doubt C. K. Sprengel's view that the streaks & spots of colour (soft-marl) on the corolla of most nectariferous flowers, serve as guides to insects, that they may find out quickly, where the nectar-vessel lies. I think the Bees which flew so quickly from flower to flower on the under sides of the Antirrhinum, or those which bored the pair of holes on the Penstemon, or those which bored through calyx & corolla in the Salvia would tell Mr Sprengel, that although he might want such aids, they did not. I know hardly any flower which Bees open & insert their proboscis into, more rapidly, than the common tall Linaria, which has a little purplish well-closed flower; I have actually watched one Humble Bee suck 24 flowers in one minute; yet on this flower there are no streaks of colour to guide these quick clever workmen.

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On Bees Boring holes in flowers

August 16th 1841

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