A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



in it, being four times as large as before, and her weight is that of 

 ten worker-bees ; her wings are too small for such a body. Moreover, 

 the Brazilian queen is not fed, as is the queen of the European hive ; 

 she has to fetch her own food. When the queen begins to attend to 

 her business in life, she wanders indefatigably over the combs, 

 and lays her eggs in the cells prepared for them. It is in her power 

 to determine the sex of the brood, for the semen of the drone is 

 received in a small pouch near the oviduct, and when an egg, on 

 leaving the ovary and gliding through the oviduct, passes the mouth 

 of this pouch, the queen may open the latter, so that a spermatozoon 

 slips out and fertilizes the egg ; or she may keep it closed, when the 

 egg is laid unfertilized. In the first case the result is a female bee, 

 queen or worker; in the second, a male bee. Thus, the drones have 

 no father, and inherit their male qualities from their grandfather, 

 since the queen, when still in the egg, was fertilized at the time of 

 her conception. 



The workers are females, but their sexual organs are stunted, 

 and they have no erotic instincts. In return, their bodies are organized 

 with a view to their work; for only the workers bear the baskets 

 for gathering pollen and the brushes for brushing it off; they alone 

 exude the wax for cell-building from the back of the abdomen (our 

 European bees exude it from the underside of the abdomen) , and 

 they alone possess all the miraculous instincts which maintain the 

 bee community. The different development of the two forms of 

 female appears to be the result of a different diet. The future queen 

 is given a special food, known as "royal jelly," and the larva grows 

 up in a specially large "royal" cell. Among the Brazilian bees we 

 find "royal" cells only in the higher species; among the less evolved 

 species, such as the Mandassaias, the Tujubas and the Guarupus, 

 only one kind of cell has been found ; the emerging queens develop 

 their sexual organs gradually, and apparently do not become sexually 

 mature until their new colony has swarmed. The drones, which 

 in the case of European bees are given larger cells than those 

 of the workers, have cells of the same size in Brazil, and the 

 Brazilian combs are thus on the whole more evenly constructed 

 than the European, though some species produce more irregular 

 combs. 



Indefatigably the bees labour in their community, and it is 



marvellous to behold how delicately they execute their constructive 



work. Some of the Brazilian bees even begin by laying down a 



ground-plan of the comb ; a plate of wax is prepared, and on this 



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