Wasps, Bees, and Ants 



521 



A community of the hivc-bcc, which may live, of course, not in a hive at 

 all, but in a hollow tree, as undoubtedly was the habit of the species in wild 

 state (the "bee-trees" of America, however, are inhabited by bee colonies 

 which have swarmed away from domesticated ones and are only wild by 

 virtue of escaping from the slave-yards of their human 

 masters), consists normally of about 10,000 (winter) to 

 50,000 (summer) individuals, of which one is a fertile fe- 

 male, the queen; a few score to several hundred are 



Fig. 726. Fig. 727. 



Fig. 726. — The honey-bee, Apis mellifica. A, queen; B, drone; C, worker. (Natural 



size.) 

 Fig. 727. — Hind leg of worker honey-bee, Apis mellifica, showing pollen-basket. (Much 



enlarged.) 



males, the drones; and the rest are infertile females, the workers. These 

 three kinds of individuals are readily distinguishable by structural charac- 



FlG. 728. — Ovaries of queen (.4) and worker {B) honey-bee, Apis mellifica. et, egg- 

 tubes; sp, spemiatheca; pg, poison-gland; ps, poison-sac. (.■Xftcr Lcuckart; much 

 enlarged.) 



ters. The queen (Fig. 726) has a slender abdomen one-half longer than that 

 of a worker, she has no wax-plates on the under side of the abdominal seg- 



