1 86 ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY 



possess certain special structures or body modifications to 

 enable them to perform certain special functions connected 

 with their performance of the various industries characteristic 

 of the species. These special structures will be described in 

 some detail later when the various special industries are par- 

 ticularly considered. In internal organization the workers 

 differ from the queen in having the ovaries rudimentary, so 

 that only in exceptional cases can workers produce fertile 

 eggs. 



In functions the three castes differ as they do in the social 

 wasps and the bumble-bees, only more constantly; that is, the 



queen lays the eggs, never, as with 

 the bumble-bees and social wasps, 

 doing any food-gathering or nest- 

 building; the males act simply as 

 consorts for the queen, which 

 means that only one of every thou- 

 sand, perhaps, performs any neces- 

 jg sary function at all in the commu- 



... nal economy; the workers build 

 FIG. 89 Honey-bee, Apis / ' 



mellifica. a, Queen; b, drone; c, brood- and food-cells, gather, pre- 

 worker. (About jnatural size.) p are and store food, feed and 



otherwise care for the young, re- 

 pair, clean, ventilate, and warm the hive, guard the entrance 

 and repel invaders, feed the queen, control the production of 

 new queens, and, with the aid of a queen, distribute the spe- 

 cies, founding new communities, by swarming. 



The life history of a community is as follows: A "swarm" 

 consisting of a queen and a number of workers (from two to 

 twenty thousand or more), issues from a community nest and 

 finds, through the efforts of a few of the workers, a place for a 

 new nest. This is some sheltered hollow place, usually, through 

 the intervention of the bee-keeper, another hive. Taking 

 possession of this new nesting-place, the workers immediately 

 begin to secrete wax and to build "comb," i.e., double-tiered 

 layers of waxen cells, usually as "curtains" or plates hanging 

 down from the ceiling of the nest. The bee-keepers supply 

 artificially made "foundations" or beginnings of these curtains 



