260 ] The Wonderful Ways of Insects and Spiders 



Sink the chimney into the earth to a depth of two inches and 

 cover the top with a piece of mosquito netting held in place by 

 a rubber band. You can make a similar cage with a large jar, or 

 an aquarium also covered with mosquito netting, and with soil 

 and plants set on the bottom. 



Once you have obtained a few crickets, place them inside the 

 cage with a cabbage leaf or other greens and fasten the mosquito 

 netting top. Aside from providing their leafy food, it is a good 

 idea to occasionally drop a little corn meal saturated with water 

 into the glass cage it will furnish moisture as well as food. 

 Periodically, too, the inside quarters should be sprinkled with 

 water to keep the atmosphere moist. 



You may conclude from sad experience that it is not practicable 

 to keep more than one cricket in the cage; they frequently start 

 fighting with fatal results. 



BEES HONEY-MAKERS, POLLINIZERS, AND STINGERS 



What probably impresses children above all about bees 

 is their stinging ability. "Is it true that a bee dies after it stings 

 you? Can only females sting? Don't bees sting when they are 

 swarming?" I have heard youngsters put these queries incessantly 

 before the topic of honey-making ever came up. 



The Bee's Sting: Tormenting humans is far from the primary use 

 of stingers. When the first queen hatches in a hive, she imme- 

 diately rips open other queen cells unless she is restrained by 

 the workers and stings the inmates to death, thereby removing 

 all possible rivals. Queens have the ability to sting over and 

 over again but they use their sting only on other queens. 



It is a worker bee that will sting you, and it commits suicide 

 by doing so. Stinging brings twenty- two muscles into play; when 

 the stinger is torn out of the worker's body, death results. 



The order of insects to which bees and wasps and ants belong 

 is the only one in which genuine stingers are found. The stinger 

 is the modified ovipositor (or egg-laying organ) of the female 

 worker, so obviously the males or "drones" possess no stings. In 

 early summer, when a mass of bees leave their hive with a queen 



