10 MONTANA EXPERIMENT STATION 



is a central proboscis or tongue which is capable of being drawn in 

 for about half its length, and then it is bent under and carried with 

 the tip against the neck. The tongue proper of the proboscis has 

 a groove down its length, in which operates a rod which raises the 

 honey, chiefly by capillarity. The lower portion of the tongue is 

 covered with a large number of gathering hairs, and at the tip is 

 flattened out, forming a spoon known as the bouton. The proboscis 

 has two pairs of appendages located, one of each, on either side of 

 the tongue proper. These are known as the maxillary and labial 

 palpi respectively, and are chiefly tactile organs assisting, presum- 

 ably, in the gathering of honey. Structurally viewed the proboscis 

 may be considered as the enlarged and modified labium or lower 

 lip, also called the hypopharynx. The^ labrum or upper lip, also 

 known as the epiphanynx, is present unmodified. The side jaws or 

 mandibles are present and are modified, not for biting purposes, but 

 to serve as paddles in the manipulation of the wax in comb-build- 

 irg and also in other work about the colony. 



The glands for the secretion of wax are located on the under 

 s?de of the abdomen, under the upper and covered portion of the 

 abdominal plates. These horny ^plates of chitin, covered with 

 branching hairs, overlap each other like the shingles of a house. 

 It is on the upper portion of these plates, covered with the plates 

 above, that the wax scales form and appear between the plates of 

 segments, pushing out farther and farther as the process of secret- 

 ing goes on. These scales are seized by the forceps of the hind leg, 

 previously described, and passed forward by the other legs to the 

 madibles where the wax is softened and worked until of the right 

 condition for building purposes. 



Structurally considered the stinger of a bee is a modified ovi- 

 positor. In the case of the queen bee, its principal service is in the 

 deposition of eggs and in the drone or male bee it is absent. In the 

 worker or undeveloped female, as will appear later, it is modified 

 for defensive purposes and provided with poison, chiefly formic* 

 acid, for injection into wounds inflicted. The stinger proper con- 

 sists of two darts barbed at the ends. In the act of stinging these 

 darts are alternately thrust outward and inward by complex muscu- 

 lar action, thus resulting in the deeper insertion of the sting. The 

 poison is the product of a pair of glands in the ventral portion of 

 the abdomen and is stored in a sack from which it is conducted by 



