50 Proceedings of the 



there are a few species which are parasitic on others ; these have been called 

 Cuckoo bees. They appear to collect no pollen, and have no special appa- 

 ratus for the purpose. The females only have specialised organs for 

 collecting pollen, and they may be known from the males because they 

 have six segments only to the body, whereas the males have seven ; but 

 then the female has a sting, whereas the male has none, and it has been 

 presumed by many that the sting of the female is really onl}' the seventh 

 segment in a contracted form. 



There are two great divisions of the Melliferse known as Social 

 Bees and Solitary Bees. The Social bees live in large numbers in 

 the same hive or nest. The Solitary bees Hve in pairs only, one 

 male and one female in each. In the Social bees exists what has been 

 called a third sex, viz., the worker ; but these workers are really only 

 undeveloped females, and of late years it has been shown that a worker can. 

 even produce fertile eggs, but that eggs so produced always turn to males, 

 never to workers or females. The workers have the same pollen-collecting 

 organs as the females, and, as their name implies, do the collecting for the 

 hive or nest. Males may often be found with a good deal of pollen on their 

 hairs, but they have no regular apparatus for collecting it. All the Social- 

 bees collect their pollen on the tibite or shins of their hind legs, which are 

 outwardly smooth and slightly concave, and fringed on each side with long 

 hairs, forming what has been called a " Corbicula," or basket, in which the 

 pollen is taken home. But among the Solitary bees some collect on the 

 tibia3, others on the under side of the body or stomach, if we may so call- 

 it; and in this group those parts on which the pollen collecting takes place 

 are generally densely covered with hairs ; and it is to the arrangement and 

 formation of these hairs that I wish especially to call your attention. As t 

 have said above, all the pollen collectors have more or less plumose hairs ; 

 in some these plumose hairs are found nearly everywhere on the bod}', in 

 others only on particular parts. The appearance of plumosity is caused by 

 the hairs being branched ; the branches generally spring from all sides, 

 and therefore in the very de nsely plumose hairs the whole has the appear- 

 ance more or less of a brush. The variation in structure is very remark- 

 able. In some the main stem bears such short branches that they look 

 merely like the teeth of a saw ; in others the branches are long and curved. 

 In some the branches are thick, as thick in fact at the base as the parent 

 stem ; in others they are filamentary or thread-like. In some the whole- 

 hair is shaped something Uke a young tree ; in others the branches are so 

 compacted together that without a strong lens the whole hair looks like a 

 scale. There are others again where all the branches spring from one side 

 only. Nearly every variation seems to exist between these extreme forma. 

 Besides these branched hairs there are simple hairs, spirally grooved haira 

 with simple apices, spirally grooved hairs flattened at the apex 

 into a sharp spade-like edge, and spirally grooved hairs flattened 

 near the apex into a sharp lateral knife-like edge. Anyone look- 

 ing at a series of our British bees would see a great difference as to 



