THE HONEY BEE 367 



It is probably color, odor, and the structure of both insect and plant 

 which determine which plants are visited most. 



Many plants are so constructed that an insect entering the flower 

 for nectar conies in contact with the pollen of the plant which thus 

 brushes off on the insect's back (Fig. 239). Then as another flower 

 is visited this pollen is brushed off by the stigma thus bringing about 

 fertilization. 



CLASSIFICATION 



The Summary of the Arthropoda will show under what phylum, 

 class and order bees are classified. But here it is necessary to mention 

 the following five types of honey bees found in the United States, though 

 none are native. 



German, with black-colored abdomen. These are the so-called wild 

 honey bees. 



Italian, with yellow-striped abdomen. 



Carniolan, with gray abdomen. 



Cyprian, with yellow abdomen. 



Caucasian, with yellow-gray abdomen. 



All bees are included in the great family Apidae, but there are both 

 solitary and social species. Then, too, some are miners, carpenters, leaf- 

 cutters, etc. 



As different species of bees have different length of tongues their 

 food must vary accordingly. This was seen in our discussion of the 

 Bumble Bee, which alone of all the bees, has a long enough tongue to 

 obtain the nectar from red clover. Short-tongued bees must seek a 

 flower with a less deeply placed nectar. 



The list of books at the end of this chapter will furnish many chap- 

 ters of interest as to the more detailed life and habits of all species of 

 bees. 



THE FLY 



As flies may carry "tuberculosis, cholera, enteritis (including epi- 

 demic dysentery and cholera infantum the fly-time 'summer complaint' 

 of infants), spinal meningitis, bubonic plague, smallpox, leprosy, 

 syphillis, gonorrhea, ophthalmia, and the eggs of tapeworms, hookworm, 

 and a number of other parasitic worms," they are certainly worthy of 

 our attention, and should be thought of here, although it must not be 

 thought that flies are the only carriers of these diseases. This is 

 especially interesting when it is noted that while only about two persons 

 die each year in the United States from the bites of poisonous snakes, 

 about one hundred from the bites of rabid dogs, nearly 100,000 die an- 

 nually from diseases carried by flies. 



There are more than 43,000 different kinds of flies, gnats and mos- 

 quitoes which have been described in entomological literature, and there 

 is no telling how many more are still unknown. Tachina flies (Fig. 240), 



