228 THE BIOLOGY OF INSECTS 



— a degenerative modification — while the workers except 

 for their sterility represent " the typical female of the 

 species." Wax ** is produced by the males as well as by 

 the workers — the one case in which a male Hymenopteran 

 seems to perform a useful social function," as Wheeler 

 remarks. In the communities of stingless bees the activities 

 of the nest are carried on by the workers, the queen's 

 functions being from the beginning confined to repro- 

 duction ; hence for the foundation of a new community a 

 swarm comprising a queen with some workers is essential. 

 These insects construct nests usually with layers of waxen 

 comb consisting of hexagonal chambers with the openings 

 on top. Their habits are curiously primitive, for the 

 workers, according to Wheeler's account, '* put a quantity 

 of honey and pollen into each cell, and after the queen has 

 laid an egg in it, provide it with a waxen cover, so that the 

 larva is reared exactly Hke that of a solitary bee." But they 

 have the habit of storing food in special receptacles ; H. W. 

 Bates (1863) described the nest of a Brazilian Melipona 

 which contained *' about two quarts of pleasantly-tasted 

 liquid honey." 



The Hive-bee group (Apis) are the most highly 

 specialised of the family, and the exceedingly ancient 

 domestication of the common species by mankind has 

 rendered it one of the most familiar of all insects. Some 

 aspects of the association of bees with our own race will be 

 discussed later in this volume (Chap. XIV) ; for the 

 present it is sufficient to suggest that the conditions under 

 which domestic bees are reared, in straw skep or wooden 

 hive, are modified from the manner of life of their wild 

 ancestors. The few wild species of Apis all inhabit south- 

 eastern Asia. Apis dorsata and A. florea build typical 

 waxen combs in a single layer with two series of chambers 

 arranged back to back and opening horizontally, suspended 

 openly from the branches of trees. A. indica (hardly 

 separable as a species from the domestic A. mellifica) makes 

 a number of similar combs hanging side by side in hollow 

 trees, and this is the habit of communities of A. mellifica 



