11 



of ten branches, and formed by longitudinal tubes, 

 numbering about one hundred or more and containing 

 seventeen or twenty eggs in each tube, and terminating in 

 the one oviduct, the two stomachs, the small intestine, the 

 venom bag, and last the long bent sting, peculiar to the 

 Queen bee. All these parts are inclosed within the six 

 scaly rings of unequal breadth, and these external walls or 

 scales constructed so as to contract or expand, and perform 

 all the duties of circulation and secretion ; and in the 

 worker bee enables it to digest the honey, and secrete the 

 wax in the wax pockets, as shown in the specimens ex- 

 hibited here (but these are undeveloped in the Queen bee), 

 the discharge of the venom from the poison bag into the 

 grooves of the barbed strings, which are shorter and 

 stronger in the worker bee. The worker bees have the 

 power of regurgitating the honey into the cells> 

 through the CBsophagus from the sucking sto- 

 mach, which is like the true crop of the pigeon. 

 Thus as briefly as possible I have called your attention to 

 the queen and worker bee, the females of the hive. And I 

 only wish I could impress upon all, that if the true history 

 of these queens, be learned by all bee-keepers, before they 

 bought those costly hives, and swarms of Ligurians, and 

 books made to order, they would not be so frequently dis- 

 appointed of their hopes of establishing an apiary, and their 

 honey harvest, or find the deserted hives and dead bees in 

 the early cold spring of this country. The truth is also, a* 

 Sir W. Jardine observes—" The writers on bees, like writers 

 on many other subjects, especially in natural history, are 

 fond of classing acts and proceedings of their little favourites 

 under certain and fixed uniform rules, from which they are 

 supposed never to deviate, whereas daily experience may 

 convince us, that bees, like human beings, are often the 

 slaves of circumstances, and their instinct is sometimes at 

 fault," and it is with this experience, and the feeling that 

 properly to study the natural history of the honey bees 

 they should be kept and examined in hives, as much ap- 



