ON BEES' TONGUES, AND HOW THEY 

 SUCK HONEY 



IN order to understand how a bee sucks honey 

 it will be necessary to go into some rather careful 

 details as to the construction of its tongue and 

 mouth organs. These I will make as short 

 and simple as I can, but the apparatus is a very 

 complicated one, and it will be impossible to 

 describe it without a good deal of technical 

 phraseology. 



The tongue has always been considered such 

 an important feature in a bee's structure that 

 it has been made the chief basis of their classifi- 

 cation. On this subject I will only say that 

 there are three principal types of tongues a short 

 bifid tongue (fig. 19, 3 x ), resembling those of the 

 fossors ; a short pointed one, shaped somewhat like 

 a spear head (fig. 19, 2, 2a) ; and a long parallel- 

 sided, ribbon-like tongue (fig. 19, 1, la). The bees 

 are classified on what is considered to be an 



1 In this case, only the actual tongue (or ligula) and 

 its paraglossce are figured. 



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