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from Brown Corpus
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Not always, though, does the development of a bumblebee colony take place in the smooth fashion we have just described.
Some members of the bee family have become idlers, social parasites that live at the expense of their hardworking relatives.
Bumblebees can thus suffer severely from the onslaughts of Psithyrus, the `` cuckoo-bumblebee '' as it is called in some European countries.
Female individuals of Psithyrus look deceptively like the workers and queens of the bumblebees they victimize.
The one sure way to tell victim and villain apart is to examine the hind legs which in the case of the idler, Psithyrus, lack the pollen baskets -- naturally!!
The female parasite spends much time in her efforts to find a nest of her host.
When she succeeds, she usually manages to slip in unobtrusively, to deposit an egg on a completed loaf of beebread before the bumblebees seal the egg compartment.
The hosts never seem to recognize that something is amiss, so that the compartment afterward is sealed normally.
Thus, the larvae of the intruder can develop at the expense of the rightful inhabitants and the store of beebread.
Later on, they and the mother Psithyrus are fed by the Bombus workers.
Worse still, in a number of cases it has been claimed that the Psithyrus female kills the Bombus queen.

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