HyMENOPTEBA, 267 



are known to children, who frequently put them to death in order to 

 obtain the honey contained within their body. They inhabit subter- 

 ranean nests in communities of fifty or sixty, and sometimes of two or 

 three hundred individuals. The society is dissolved on the approach 

 of winter. It is composed of males distinguished by their small size, 

 reduced head, narrow mandibles, bearded, and terminated by two 

 teeth, and frequently by a difference of colours; of females, which 

 are larger than the others, furnished with mandibles formed like a 

 spoon, as is also the case with those of the neuters or labourers ; the 

 latter, as to size, are intermediate between the males and females ; 

 Reaumur however says that there are two varieties ; the first, 

 stronger and of a moderate size, and the second, smaller, which ap- 

 peared to him to be the most lively and active. Huber, Jun,, has 

 verified this fact. According to him, several of the labourers which 

 are hatched in the spring copulate with the males that have pro- 

 ceeded from their common mother, and lay soon after, but produing 

 males only, which are to fecundate the ordinary females, or those 

 which appear late in the season, and are destined to establish a new- 

 colony in the spring of the ensuing year. All the others, the little 

 females not excepted, perish. 



Some of the ordinary females which have escajied the severity of 

 the winter take advantage of the first fine weather to construct their 

 nests. One species — Apis lapidaria — establishes itself on the sur- 

 face of the earth under stones, but all the others form their habita- 

 tion in it, frequently descending to a depth of one or two feet, in the 

 way we are about to descrbe. Dry plains, fields, and hills are the lo- 

 calities they select. These subterranean cavities, which are of consi- 

 derable extent and wider than high, have the figure of a dome. The 

 ceiling is constructed with earth and with moss, carded by these In- 

 sects, which they transport there, fibre by fibre, entering the cavity 

 backwards, A coating of coarse wax is laid over its walls. Some- 

 times a simple opening, designedly left at the bottom of the nest, 

 serves for an entrance, and then again a w^inding passage covered 

 with moss, and a foot or two long, leads to the domicil. The bottom 

 of the cavity is lined with a layer of leaves, for the accommodation of 

 the brood. The females first place brown, irregular, mammiliform 

 masses of wax there, called patee by Reaumur, and which, on ac- 

 count of their shape and colour, he compares to truffles. Their in- 

 ternal cavities are destined to enclose the eggs and larvae. There 

 the latter live in society until the moment has arrived when they are 

 to become nymphs ; they then separate and spin ovoid and silken co- 

 coons, laid vertically against each other. In this state the Insect is 

 always reversed , or, like the female nymphs of the common Bee, with 

 the head downwards ; we always find these cocoons perforated infe- 

 riorly, when the perfect Insects have left them. Reaumur says that 

 the larvae feed on the wax Avhich forms their dwelling ; according 

 to Huber, it merely protects them from cold and wet, their aliment 

 consisting of a tolerably large quantity of pollen moistened with 

 honey, Avith Avhich the labourers carefully supply them; when it is 

 consumed they perforate the cover of their cells, furnish them with 

 more, and shut them up again. They even enlarge them when the 



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