i 9 2 ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY 



more sometimes), which are often necessary for successful 

 foraging, are undertaken. The pollen is taken up or brushed 

 off from the ripe anthers of the flowers with the mouth-parts, 

 fore legs or ventral body- wall, the pollen-grains being readily 

 entangled in the numerous branching hairs, and then, by 

 clever manipulation of the fore, middle, and hind legs aided by 

 special pollen brushes (plantae) on the inner side of the first 

 tarsal segments of the hind feet, transferred and packed into 

 the pollen-baskets, one on the outer face of each hind tibia. A 

 forager loaded with pollen returns to the hive, and, seeking an 

 empty cell near the brood-cells, stands over it and with her 

 hind legs partly in it, thrusts off the two masses with the 

 aid of the middle legs (the spurs of the middle tibiae being 

 apparently often used as pries). This pollen is tamped 

 down in the cell by inside workers and receives no further 

 manipulation. 



The "honey" which is collected by the foragers is not yet 

 bee-honey, but is nectar of flowers, too watery and too likely 

 not to "keep" to be stored in the cells without further treat- 

 ment. It is sucked and lapped up by the complicated elongate 

 flexible mouth-proboscis, swallowed into the fore-stomach or 

 honey-sac, and carried in this to the hive. Bees have been 

 seen to exude drops of water on their return flight when honey- 

 laden, and it is possible that it comes from the nectar in the 

 honey-stomach. At any rate some 10 or 12 per cent, of 

 the water content of the nectar has to be evaporated before 

 this nectar becomes honey. When the foraging worker with 

 honey-sac full returns to the hive it regurgitates its nectar 

 either into the mouth of another bee or into a clean (new wax) 

 cell, usually near the margin of the comb. At the bottom of 

 the honey-sac is the so-called stomach-mouth, a little pea-like 

 protuberance with two cross-slits, making four lips. These 

 lips can be opened or closed voluntarily; if the bee drinking 

 nectar wishes to bring it back to the hive to store it, she keeps 

 them closed, thus making a sac of the honey-stomach, open 

 only through the mouth; whenever she wishes to feed herself 

 she opens them, thus allowing the honey or pollen to pass on 

 into the true or digesting stomach. This arrangement also 



