. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. • ig. 4. leweUveed or (Impatiens biflora). by John H. Lovell. Tmich-me-not Photograph Fig. 5. Turtlehead (Chelone glabra L.) A bumblebee flower. Photo- graph by John H. Lovell. spur bent inward beneath it. It is a bumblebee flower and is very fre- quently visited in the locality of the writer by the wandering bumblebee (Bombus vagans) and the ground bumblebee (Bombus terricola). The blossom is suspended horizontally with the stigma and anthers lying on its upper side so that when a bee en- ters the corolla sac its back is dusted with white pollen, as
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. • ig. 4. leweUveed or (Impatiens biflora). by John H. Lovell. Tmich-me-not Photograph Fig. 5. Turtlehead (Chelone glabra L.) A bumblebee flower. Photo- graph by John H. Lovell. spur bent inward beneath it. It is a bumblebee flower and is very fre- quently visited in the locality of the writer by the wandering bumblebee (Bombus vagans) and the ground bumblebee (Bombus terricola). The blossom is suspended horizontally with the stigma and anthers lying on its upper side so that when a bee en- ters the corolla sac its back is dusted with white pollen, as has often been observed and mentioned by beekeep- ers. But contrary to the general im- pression, honeybees obtain little if any nectar from the Impatiens, ex- cept when the spurs are punctured by bumblebees. (Fig. 4). It is a matter of some difficulty and delay for bumble bees to enter the flowers, and very likely short- tongued workers are not able to reach all the nectar, so after a little time they bite holes in the spurs, out of which they steal the sweet con- tents. On August 10th I examined a large number of flowers, but none of the nectaries were punctured, and they were visited normally by Bom- Inis vagans at the rate of from seven to twelve visits per minute. But dur- ing the latter part of August I found hundreds of spurs perforated and both bumblebees and honeybees gathering the nectar from these punctures. (This habit led Mueller to call the bumblebee an "anti-tele- ;) A honeybee was watched during 25 successive visits, and not once did it even make a pretense of entering the flower, but in every in- stance it swung itself astride of the spur, pushed its tongue through the puncture, and became literally a flower robber. Ten such visits may be made in a minute. The Impatiens is certainly rightly named. A typical wild bumblebee flower is the turtlehead (Chelone glabra), which grows along the banks of streams and on wet land. The large white flowers
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
