4o8 A.V ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



the fact that they are stored with a mixture of pollen and honey, 

 or honey or |)ollen alone, instead of with insects, and it is this 

 habit of collecting pollen that makes the bees so highly useful to 

 the farmer, by their incidentally poUenizing the flowers from 

 wiiich the material is gathered. There are several interesting 

 structural modifications in the bees to facilitate the work of gath- 

 ering both pollen and honey, and, incidentally, of accomplishing 

 pollination to the best advantage. Thus, the clothing, instead 

 of being composed of simple cylindrical processes, is com- 

 posed, in large part, at least, of bristly, plumose or twisted 

 hair, — that is to say, each hair is furnished with little spurs, 

 or long, slender branches, making it resemble a plume under 

 the microscope. Or it may be twisted like a screw, or fur- 

 nished with a knob at the tip. The result is, that as the insects 

 move over the flowers, the pollen grains adhere to the vestiture. 

 and this also accounts for the fact, probably noticed by every ob- 

 servant fruit-grower, that bees frequently bury themselves com- 

 pletely in the blossoms, or roll over every part of them. Such 

 insects are after pollen, not honey, and by so rolling about the 

 pollen grains are brought into contact with and adhere to the 

 surface of the insect. Incidentally, also, as soon as the bee flies 

 from one flower to another, and repeats this operation, a sufficient 

 number of pollen grains from the first flower adhere to the stigma 

 of the second and pollenize it ; while in flying from one tree to 

 another, cross-pollination is accomplished. The flowers visited 

 in this way by a single bee are very numerous. When a honey- 

 bee becomes more or less covered with pollen, it cleans itself by 

 means of specialized structures on the legs, which enable it to 

 literally comb out its entire body covering. The masses of pol- 

 len gathered in that way are then rolled into a lump and fastened 

 to the upper side of the posterior tibia, where lateral fringes of 

 long hair hold it in place and actually form a basket. These 

 combing arrangements are situated on the first joint of the hind 

 tarsi, which is broadened for that purpose in the social bees, and 

 is usually much longer than the other tarsal segments. Some 

 bees have pollen baskets not only on the tibia, but on the femur 

 and coxa as well, and occasionally the whole posterior i)ortion of 

 the thorax and the space between the thorax and abdomen is 

 utilized to store the pollen masses. Sometimes the under side of 



