WAX-WORKERS 141 



nests in trees, caves, and buildings, in the latter 

 case often becoming a nuisance. We have already 

 mentioned the Brazilian species that gather clay 

 at times instead of pollen, for the purpose of filling 

 up inconvenient crevices in the hollow tree they 

 have adopted as a " hive." Bates says that most 

 of the South American species of Melipona are 

 workers in clay as well as in wax, and they appear 

 to use it as our bee uses propolis, the gummy 

 varnish scraped from the leaf-buds of certain trees 

 and the stems of some smaller plants. The same 

 naturalist states that none of these American bees 

 have attained to that high degree of architectural 

 skill in the construction of their comb which is 

 shown by the European hive bee. The wax cells 

 of the Meliponce are generally oblong, showing 

 only an approximation to the hexagonal shape in 

 places where several of them are built in contact. 

 These bees though they have stings cannot use 

 them — at least on human skin — because their 

 points are not sharp enough, but they make up 

 for this defect with their jaws when any one dis- 

 turbs their nests. The Indians, of course, fre- 

 quently do this to obtain honey, which the nests 

 contain in abundance. Bates saw one opened 

 which contained a couple of quarts of pleasantly 

 tasted liquid honey, and the Indian who obtained 

 it was completely covered with the bees. Gosse 

 describes one of these " stingless " bees, known in 

 Jamaica as Angelitos for this reason. He says 

 that they keep their store of honey in the lower 



