WASPS AND BEES 



3001 



As regards habits, there are two chief operations in which bees and wasps 

 engage, namely, the procuring of food and the rearing of a progeny. This food is 

 of two kinds, honey gathered from the nectaries of flowers, and bee bread, or 

 flower pollen moistened with honey, kneaded by the workers, and stored away, for 

 feeding the larvae. The workers, or honey gatherers, do not bring in more than 

 one sort of pollen at the same time; and when the nurses, or domestic bees, receive 

 the pollen from the honey gatherers they keep it carefully separate. This sort of 

 pollen is more nutritious than another, and a female larva fed on the more nutritious 

 bee bread will become a queen or fertile female, and one hive cannot afford more 

 than a few of such luxuries. Those fed on the less nutritious bread turn out 

 workers, or nonfertile females. For the males special conditions are arranged by 

 the queen when laying the eggs. Royal cells, framed for the feeding of queens, 

 are much larger than those for workers. In secreting wax for the cells, bees hav- 



A 



INMATES OF A HIVE. 



A 1. Queen; 2. Worker (nonfertile female); 3. Drone or male; 4. Mandible from outside. (All slightly en- 

 larged.) B. Hind leg of worker; c. Thigh (femur}; b. Shank (tibia); a. First tarsal joint. C. Egg (much 

 enlarged). D. Larva and pupa (natural size). E. Longitudinal section of the abdomen of a worker; 1. 

 Honey crop; 2. Egg sac; 3. Poison sac; 4. Oil gland; 5. Semen sac or spermatheca; 6. Sting; c. Segmental in- 

 terstices, whence the wax issues. F. Mouth parts; a. Maxillae; d. Basal joint of same; b. Labial palpi; c. 

 Tongue. G. Bee louse and its pupa (much enlarged). H. Brush (much enlarged). J. Poison apparatus; 

 a. Poison gland; b. Poison vesicle; c. Sting groove; a. Sting; e. Sting sheath. (All much enlarged.) 



ing eaten as much honey as they can conveniently carry, hang in a cluster from the 



top of the hive. Soon the wax begins to burst from glands beneath the edges of 



the segments of the body, and is rubbed off with the legs. Cell construction, now 



begins, and in addition to the wax, a sort of resinous cement, drawn from the sap 



of conifers, is used to strengthen the walls at their angles, and also to cover the 



inside of the hive. The six-sided form of the cells of the honeybee 



appears to have been evolved after ages of gradual modification from 



the simple cylinder which would be formed by a cylindrical body as that of a bee 



molding wax around itself; this form alone admitting of the greatest number 



of cells being placed side by side, and tier by tier, without leaving waste vacant 



spaces between. The greater the number of the cells the stronger the color, the 



stronger the color the more numerous the swarms and the greater the chance of 



the perpetuation of the race. The intermediate form between the cylinder and the 



