ARTHROI'ODA 



225 



The bees (Fig. 229) represent the highest type of development 

 of the Hymenoptera and possibly of the entire Insecta as well. 

 They have the body and posterior pair of legs densely hairy, and 

 these serve to 

 carry the pollen 

 on which the 

 larva? are fed 

 in part. Some 

 bees are solitary, 

 building nests 

 in walls, or in 

 tubes in the 

 earth, in which 

 the eggs are laid 

 with a store of 

 food for the 

 larva?. But the 



majority are social, living in well-organized communities. Some, 

 however, never build nests for themselves but deposit their eggs 

 in the nests of other bees ; they are sometimes called parasitic 

 bees. The familiar bumblebee makes its nest underground, and 

 the eggs are laid amidst a store of honey and pollen, on which 

 the larvae feed. Only the queen bee or fertile female survives the 

 winter. In the spring she seeks a hole in the ground and there 

 deposits some pollen she has gathered, and lays a number of 

 eggs ; these develop into infertile females. Thereafter the only 



FIG. 228. Polistes tepidus, wasp and nest. 



MacBride.) 



( After Shipley and 



Fig. 229. Apis mellifica, the honey bee. i, worker; 2, queen bee; 3, drone. (After Ship- 

 ley and MacBride.) 



work of the queen consists in egg-laying, the infertile females 

 or workers collecting pollen for food and caring for the young. 

 In the early autumn some males or drones and some fertile 

 females or queens are hatched from the eggs; then some of the 

 queen bees, after being fertilized, hibernate and the others die. 



Q 



