128 ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY 



Body -regions and Segments. The body of a honey-bee, like 

 that of a grasshopper, is made up of three readily distinguish- 

 able main parts or regions, the head, thorax and abdomen, each 

 part bearing its special appendages, as antennae and mouth- 

 parts on the head, legs and wings on the thorax, and the 

 parts forming the sting on the abdomen. 



Each of the main body-regions is composed of several body 

 segments, but in the head and thorax these segments are so 

 fused as to be hardly distinguishable as separate parts. In the 

 abdomen, however, six distinct segments can be distinguished. 



All insects have the body fundamentally composed of suc- 

 cessive segments grouped more or less compactly into three 

 body regions. The typical number of segments fused to form 

 the head is probably six, perhaps only four. The thorax 

 is composed of three, called prothoracic, mesothoracic, and 

 metathoracic, segments, while the abdomen comprises from 

 seven to eleven segments, although in some insects these may 

 be so fused as to make the abdomen seem made up of but three 

 or four, or even a single segment. 



Segmented Appendages. The antennas or "feelers" of the 

 head, the legs, and less plainly the mouth-parts, show that 

 each of these movable appendages of the body is made up also 

 of a series of successive segments or "joints." The hardened 

 body wall, the segmentation of the body, and the segmentation 

 or jointing of the body appendages, of the bee and all other 

 insects, are the fundamental characteristics that show their 

 relationship to the crustaceans, myriapods, spiders and other 

 Arthropoda. 



Mouth-parts. The mouth-parts of the bee are composed of 

 a skin flap called upper lip or labrum, a pair of firm, trowel-like 

 little jaws or mandibles used chiefly for moulding the wax 

 when the cells are being built, and a complex tongue-like organ 

 composed of various parts as shown and named in Fig. 51. 

 This " tongue" is the nectar-gathering organ, and is so arranged 

 that its various parts can be held together so as to form an 

 imperfect tube inside of which a long hairy rod moves back and 

 forth. The flower-nectar taken up on the expanded tip of this 



