OR, MANUAL OF ThB APIARY. 



ISI 



Claws are also used in holding: the bees to some object or 

 together while clustering. What a grip they must have. It is 

 as if we were to grasp a limb or branch and then hold hundreds 

 yes thousands, of other persons as heavy as ourselves who had 

 m turn grasped hold of us. When walking up a vertical wall 

 of glass or other smooth metal, the claws are of no use, and so 

 are turned back (Fig. 68, A), and the pulvilli-glandular 

 organs-are spread out and serve to hold the bee. These 

 secrete a viscid or adhesive substance which so sticks that the 

 bee can even walk up a window-pane. This is why bees soon 

 cloud or befoul glass over which they constantly walk. We 

 thus understand why a bee finds it laborious and difficult to 

 walk up a moist or dust-covered glass or metal surface. 



The middle legs of the worker-bee are only peculiar in the 

 prominent tibial spur (Fig. 69), and the brushes or pollen- 

 combs on the inside of the first tarsus. It has been said that 

 the spur is useful in prying off the pollen-masses from the 

 postenorlegs, as the bee enters the hive to deposit the pollen 

 in the cells. This is doubtless an error. The queen and drone 

 have this spur even longer than does the worker ; the pollen 

 comes off easily, and needs no crow-bar to loosen it. It is com- 

 mon among insects, and there are often two. The coarse 

 projecting hairs on all the feet are doubtless the agents that 

 push off the loads of pollen. 



We have already seen how the brushes or combs on the 

 inner face of the first tarsus of the middle legs serve to remove 

 the dust from the antenna cleaner. These also serve as combs, 

 like similar but more perfect organs on the posterior legs to 

 xemove the pollen from the pollen-hairs, and pack it in the 

 pollen-baskets on the hind legs. Mr. Root speaks of the 

 tongue as the organ for collecting pollen. Are not these hairs 

 really the important agents in this important work ? 



But the posterior legs are the most interesting, as it is 

 rare to find organs more varied in their uses, and so as we 

 should expect, these are strangely modified. The branching 

 or pollen-gathering hairs (Fig. 71) are very abundant on the 

 coxa trochanter and femur, and not absent, though much fewer 

 (Fig. 70) on the broad triangular tibia. The basal tarsus (Fig 

 70) is quadurate, and it and the tibia on the outside (Fig. 70) 



