CHAPTER XI 



HYMENOPTERA: ANTS. BEES AND WASPS 



To the order Hymenoptera belong the most interesting and 

 intelligent of all insects. The late Lord Avebury considered that 

 "If we judge animals by their intelligence as evinced in their 

 actions, it is not the gorilla and the chimpanzee, but the bee and, 

 above all, the ant which approach nearest to man." Indeed, in the 

 wonderfully ordered economy of their lives many of the social 

 Hymenoptera surpass even man himself, for, as Tickner Edwards 

 says in writing of the bees " Perhaps tens of thousands of years 

 before man had made fire, or chipped a flint into an axe-head, these 

 winged nations had evolved a perfect plan of life, and solved social 

 problems such as are only just beginning to cloud the horizon of 

 human existence in the twentieth century. And they and their 

 intricate communal polity have not passed away into dust, as 

 the great human nations of bygone ages have done, and as those 

 of the present day may be destined to do for all we can tell." 



The order is a very extensive one ; tens of thousands of species 

 have been named or described, yet those still unknown must 

 number even more. It includes the ants, bees, wasps, saw-flies, 

 and ichneumon-flies; insects which normally possess four mem- 

 branous wings, transparent and with comparatively few veins. 

 The hind pair is always smaller than the first pair, and when in 

 flight the hind-wings are locked to the fore-wings by a row of 

 minute hooklets placed along part of the front margin, which 

 cling fast to a groove or fold on the lower edge of the front pair. 

 The abdomen is usually attached to the thorax by a slender waist 

 or petiole, which may be very short, so that it is not observable 

 unless the abdomen is deflected, as in the bees, or of most extra- 

 ordinary length, as in many of the solitary wasps. The head is 

 generally large, and bears three ocelli on the forehead, in addition 

 to the great compound pair ; the mouth is adapted both for biting 



163 



