Americana 



VOL. I. 



BROOKLYN, JULY, 1885. 



NO. 4. 



Bees and other Hoarding Insects. 



Their Specialization into Females, Males and Workers.* 

 By Edwin A. Curley. 



I beg that you will note the order in which I have mentioned the 

 sexes. It is females and males, and not males and females. In a scien- 

 tific discussion, I feel constrained to tell the unvarnished truth regardless 

 of the consequences to the social fabric; and among the Hymenoptera, it 

 is most certainly a fact, that the ladies are all-important, and the gentle- 

 men approach as closely to perfect insignificance as it is fairly possible to 

 conceive. The happiness of a hundred thousand most willing slaves 

 depends upon the mother-bee of the hive, while three thousand idle 

 males do nothing but eat and loaf, and flit in the sunshine, in the hope 

 of that hymenial favor which only one of their number is destined to re- 

 ceive; while to the one that attains the one short flight in the sunshine 

 of wedded bliss, which is the sole object of his existence, the immediate 

 consequence is the sharp pain of mutilation, and then a lingering death 

 to be promptly followed, or perhaps to be accompanied by the execution 

 of his 2,999 insignificant and now worse than useless rivals. 



In discussing the differentiation of bees into females, males, and 

 workers, I shall have no need to call your attention to any new discover- 

 ies in the world of wonders among those minute creatures that we have 

 had with us for all ages, and whose life we are just now beginning faintly 

 to understand. My illustrations will be drawn mainly from other orders, 

 in which it will be impossible for me to make a mistake without its being 

 readily seen by some of the general public as well as the specialists. 



* Read before the Brooklyn Ent. Soc, Dec, 29, 1884. 



