330 BRITISH BEES. 



The structure of the workers, which enahles them 

 to carry on all these operations with the requisite faci- 

 lity, is very different from that of the two sexes we 

 have just described. As before said, they are abortive 

 females, but, as I shall have occasion to explain lower 

 down, capable of having this special incapacity removed, 

 if the necessary process requisite to be adopted for the 

 purpose be applied within three days of their being 

 hatched into the larva state. The acquisition of the 

 faculty of fertility entails, however, the loss of all 

 power of pursuing any of the other occupations of the 

 hive practised exclusively by the workers in general. 

 The nurture that gives it them converts them into 

 queens, and moulds them to the structure of this sex de- 

 scribed above. As a remarkable and rare exception, 

 some one or other of these workers will occasionally have 

 power of laying a few eggs, but which are always those 

 of drones. The other peculiarities of their strucfure are 

 its adaptation to the secretion of wax above described ; 

 and their power of throwing up the honey they have 

 collected in the first stomach or honey-bag, before it 

 passes on by digestion, somewhat in the way the rumi- 

 nant quadrupeds bring up the cud, of course by muscular 

 action, without the convulsion of vomiting. Their next 

 distinction is that their mandibles are edentate and more 

 like spoons, and are often so used, or as the plastering- 

 trowel of masons is for smoothing surfaces. Their legs 

 remarkably differ from those of the other sexes, all of their 

 limbs being somewhat adapted to the collection and con- 

 vevance of pollen and its manipulation, as well as that of 

 propolis ; but it is the posterior shanks which are spe- 

 cially constructed for the conveyance of these materials, 

 by being framed externally like a little basket ; being 



