176 



ENTOMOLOGY. 



The bees, formerly included in the family Apida?, belong 

 to the section Anthophila, which is divided into two fami- 

 lies. In all bees the basal joint of the hind tarsi is (ex- 

 cept in the parasitic species 

 of Nomada, etc.) broad and 

 flat, generally bristly, and 

 adapted for carrying pollen. 



Family Andrenidae. — Solitary 

 bees with the labium flattened, 

 shorter than the mentum. Halictus 

 parallelus Say excavates in fields 

 nests like those of Andrena ticina 

 Smith (Fig. 226). 



Family Apidae. — In the social 

 bees, where there are, as in Bombus 

 and Apis, numerous workers, the 

 labium is slender, not flattened, 

 and is longer than the mentum; 

 the basal joints of the labial palpi 

 are longer than the others. 



The queen humble-bee hiber- 

 nates, and in the spring founds her 

 colony by laying up pellets of pol- 

 len in some subterranean mouse- 

 nest or in a stump, and the young, 

 hatching, gradually eat the pollen, 

 and when it is exhausted and they 

 are fully fed they spin an oval 

 cylindrical cocoon. The first brood 

 are workers, the second males and 

 females. The partly hexagonal 

 cells of the stingless bees of the 

 tropics (Melipona) are built of wax 

 or clay, while the hexagonal cells of 

 the honey-bee are made by the bees 

 from wax secreted by minute sub- 

 cutaneous glands in the abdomen. 

 Though the cells are hexagonal, 

 they are not built with mathemati- 

 cal exactitude, the sides not always 

 being of the same length and thick- 

 ness. 



The cells made for the young or 

 Fig 226.— Nest of Andrena. r,. level of larval drones of the honey-bee are 

 ^Z%^bTi^A^^ larger than those of the workers, 

 with an egg laid on it; /, pollen- and the single queen-cell is large 

 mass freshly deposited by the bee. and irregularly slipper-shaped. 

 Natural size.-After Emerton. Drcne-eggs are supposed by Dzier- 



zun and Siebold not to be fertilized, while the queen-bee is the only 



