THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 69 



enterprise by apprehensions of incompetency ; or who, 

 having done so, have not known how to turn the resources of 

 this vicarious industry to the best account. ' The British 

 Bee Journal and Bee-keeper's Adviser,' published monthly, 

 and now far advanced in its second volume, affords a useful 

 medium of intercommunication upon this subject. 



Economy of White Ants. — Two interesting communications 

 from Herr Fritz Miiller to Mr. Darwin have appeared in 

 'Nature' (Nos. 225 and 237), in the former of which the 

 writer, treating of the natural history of the Brazilian 

 Termites, states that he has come to the same conclusion as 

 Mr. Bates with respect to the neuters, — namely, that these 

 are not sterile females, but modified larvae, which undergo no 

 further metamorphosis ; that, in some species of Calotermes 

 the male soldiers may even externally be distinguished from 

 the female soldiers ; and that in the company of the queen 

 there always lives a king, as observed by Smeathman a 

 century ago, but doubted by most subsequent writers. He 

 has also recognised the existence of two forms of sexual 

 individuals ; the one, consisting of winged males and females, 

 produced in vast numbers, and leaving the termitary in 

 large swarms ; the other, of wingless males and females, 

 which never quit the spot where they are born. A similar 

 result would appear to be attained thereby, as in the case of 

 the winged and wingless sexual races of the Phylloxera, 

 already referred to, the former serving to disperse the race ; 

 the latter to continue the labours of the original colony by 

 successive broods. 



Economy of Stingless Honey Bees. — Herr Fritz Miiller 

 subsequently adverts to another "interesting group of social 

 insects, the stingless honey-bees, Melipona and Trigona." 

 He mentions that in Melipona wax is secreted " on the 

 dorsal surface of the abdomen," instead of on the ventral, as 

 in hive-bees ; that the Meliponae and Trigonse " fill their 

 cells with semi-digested food before the eggs are laid;" and 

 that they close the cells "immediately after the queen has 

 dropped an egg on the food ;" whereas, in the hive-bee, the 

 eggs are laid in nearly empty cells, which the workers close 

 with wax when the adult larvae, which they have been 

 feeding, are about to undergo their pupa-metamorphosis. At 

 a recent meeting of the French Entomological Society 



