Go forth, under the open sky, and list 

 To Nature's teachings." — Bryant. 



VOL, I NEW York. October, 1878. No. 1. 



THE STING OF THE HONEY BEE, 



BY J. D. HYATT. 



The Honey Bee, Apis millifica, has been known from the 

 remotest antiquity, and no other insect has been the subject of 

 more careful study to the naturalist. 



Its wonderful intelligence and remarkable habits of forming 

 colonies and working in communities, whose united labors are 

 rendered subservient to man in the production of a luxurious 

 food ; its curious anatomical structure, and the exact adapta- 

 tion of all parts of the body to its habits of life and the nature 

 of the work to be performed, have, from time immemorial, 

 rendered this insect and its habits not only a subject of gen- 

 eral interest, but of special study and investigation. 



In this view, perhaps no less promising subject could be 

 chosen for original investigation, and yet, if we place in the 

 field of a microscope of very moderate amplification, a well 

 dissected sting of one of these insects, we shall see before us a 

 piece of mechanism which our naturalists have either imper- 

 fectly understood, or else the records of their knowledge are so 

 concealed in voluminous reports of scientific societies as to be 

 practically inaccessible to the amateur microscopist. 



It is true that we have in most of our books that treat of 

 microscopic objects, such as the works of Carpenter, Hogg, 

 Gosse, Micrographic Dictionary, etc., as well as the better class 

 of entomological works, a general description of the principal 

 pieces of this mechanism, and if we go to the head waters and 

 consult the more elaborate writings of such original investiga- 

 tors of insect anatomy, as Burmeister,Westwood,*and numerous 



* Westwood's Introduction to the Study of Insects. 1S40. 



