INSECTS. 1 29 



individuals males, females, and workers or neuters; and, 

 among other peculiarities, they are distinguished from the 

 solitary species by the secretion of the wax of which the cells 

 are constructed. The humble Bees, composing the genus 

 Bombus (Fig- 111), are known by their large size and hairy 



Fig. 111. BOMIIUS on HUAIBLE BEE. 



bodies, often of a black colour with orange bands. "They 

 form societies consisting of about fifty or sixty individuals, 

 occasionally, however, amounting to two or three hundred. 

 They construct their dwellings under ground, in meadows, 

 pastures, or hedge-rows, generally employing moss for this 

 purpose. Their union, however, lasts only till the cold weather 

 kills the great mass of the inhabitants, a few impregnated 

 females alone surviving, to become the foundresses of fresh 

 colonies at the commencement of the following spring." * 



The Hive -bee is, however, the species to which above all 

 others our interest attaches; and it is curious that much of 

 our knowledge of the habits and economy of these insects is 

 derived from the labours of a blind man. The elder Huber 

 lost his sight at the early age of seventeen ; but, by means of 

 glass hives variously constructed, he was able to exhibit to 

 his wife all that was going on within them, and by her faithful 

 recital of what she witnessed, and the aid of an untiring 

 investigator, M. Burnens, he amassed the material for his 

 celebrated work. Among the ancients, Aristotle, Pliny, and 

 Virgil have recorded their observations upon Bees ; in modem 

 times, Swammerdam, Reaumur, Latreille, Bonnet, and some 



* Westwood, page 280. 



