VI COMPARISON OF HUMBLE-BEES WITH HIVE-BEES 273 



bees and wasps, but a somewhat irregular mass, consisting of 

 larger and smaller pupa -cells, shaped like a hazel-nut, and 

 usually of a fine whitish -yellow colour, darker clumps of 

 larva-cells, and smaller clumps of eggs of the size of a lentil- 

 seed, or a pea, or even as large as a bean. Some of the 

 thimble -like pupa -cells from which the bees have already 

 emerged seem to have been converted by a coating of wax 

 into receptacles for honey and pollen ; but one also sees a 

 large number of proper honey-cells which are made of wax, 

 and of which, on a very favourable day, ten or more are 

 constructed. 



In the humble-bee family there are but two sexes, male 

 and female, for the small and large workers are only 

 females with sexual organs imperfectly developed in con- 

 sequence of imperfect nourishment, especially of being 

 insufficiently supplied with honey during their larval 

 life. 



The moral of these facts is the following : The humble- 

 bee queen is not yet so exclusively a breeding mother as 

 the bee queen. The latter is the mother, or reproductive 

 individual, of the bee community, and nothing else ; she is the 

 female reproductive organ of the social organism ; she collects 

 not, she builds not, she does not even feed herself, but is 

 fed by the workers : the humble-bee queen undertakes all 

 these duties at the commencement of her public career. The 

 same applies to the drones : the humble-bee drones feed 

 themselves, and, although only exceptionally, take part in 

 work ; the bee drones on the contrary are fed by others, like 

 the bee queen, and do no work. The humble-bee drones 

 have almost lost all independence with regard to all other 

 functions than the sexual, like the bee drones, but they have 

 not travelled so far in this direction as the latter. The same 

 also applies to the workers. The bee workers no longer lay 

 any eggs. True, quite recently cases have been recorded in 



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