The Colony and its Organization 37 



as reliable as those obtained by the experimenter on other 

 species in the course of a relatively brief investigation. A 

 new worker in bee behavior should hesitate before denying 

 the belief of the beekeeper until he is sure of his ground. 



Zoological position of the honeybee. 



The honeybee belongs to the order of insects known as 

 Hymenoptera, to which belong also many parasites of other 

 insects, the solitary and social wasps, ants and the entire 

 group of bees, from the solitary species through various 

 stages in the development of the bee colony to the honeybee. 

 The honeybee is the highest of these colonial forms, highest 

 because most specialized in its behavior and least able to 

 exist alone. Yet, while it is highly specialized in its behavior, 

 it is not so strikingly modified in its structure as are some of 

 the other Hymenoptera, such as the Ichneumonidse. Among 

 the Hymenoptera there are three groups of social insects, 

 wasps, ants and bees, and the type of colony found in these 

 three groups is fundamentally the same. The only other 

 true colonial insects are the termites, " white ants," of a 

 distinct order and with a quite different type of colony. 



The genus Apis to which the honeybee belongs also in- 

 cludes the species indica, florea, dorsata and zonata, all of 

 which are natives of the far East and none of which is as 

 useful to man as the species mellifica. 1 These are briefly 

 discussed in Chapter IX. 



1 One of the cases of confusion originating from the application of the 

 law of priority in scientific nomenclature is the attempted change of the 

 name of the honeybee from mellifica, by which it has been known for so 

 many years, to mellifera. In the 10th edition of Linnaeus' "Systema 

 Naturae" (1758), the boundary of the prehistoric for the taxonomist, the 

 name mellifera was used, while Linnaeus himself used mellifica in later 

 years. The name mellifica is found in a vast literature, it is the scientific 

 name by which the bee is known to most zoologists and beekeepers, the 

 name which Linnaeus preferred and, last but not least, it is a correctly 

 descriptive name. It should be recognized in taxonomy, as well as in 

 civic legislation, that a law to be effective must be backed by public senti- 

 ment. It might therefore with propriety be suggested to the taxonomic 

 purists that they cultivate public sentiment by allowing the zoologist, 

 dealing in things not names of things, to live in peace among his old friends. 



