462 INSECTA. 



for an entrance, and then again a winding passage covered with moss, and 

 a foot or two long, leads to the domicil. The bottom of the cavity is lined 

 with a layer of leaves, for the accommodation of the brood. The females 

 first place brown, irregular, mamilliform masses of wax there, called patte 

 by Reaumur, and which, on account of their shape and colour, he compares 

 to truffles. Their internal cavities are destined to enclose the eggs and 

 larvae. There the latter live in society until the moment has arrived when 

 they are to become nymphs; they then separate and spin ovoid and silken 

 cocoons, laid vertically against each other. In this state the Insect is always 

 reversed, or, like the female nymphs of the common Bee, with the head 

 downwards; we always find these cocoons perforated inferiorly, when the 

 perfect Insects have left them. Reaumur says that the larvae feed on the 

 wax which forms their dwelling; according to Huber, it merely protects 

 them from cold and wet, their aliment consisting of a tolerably large quan- 

 tity of pollen moistened with honey, with which the labourers carefully 

 supply them; when it is consumed they perforate the cover of their cells, 

 furnish them with more, and shut them up again. They even enlarge them 

 when the increased growth of the larvae causes them to be too much confined. 

 We also find in these nests three or four small bodies composed of brown 

 wax, or the same matter as the patee, and shaped like tumblers or almost 

 cylindrical pots, always open, and more or less filled with good honey. 

 These reservoirs of the honey are not always placed in the same situation. 



The larvae are hatched in four or five days after the eggs have been laid, 

 and complete their metamorphosis in the months of June and July. The 

 labourers remove the wax that clogs their cocoon to facilitate their issue, 

 and assist the female in her work. The number of cells which serve as 

 habitations to the larvae and nymphs increases, and they form irregular 

 combs placed in stories, on the edges of which we particularly observe the 

 brown patee of Reaumur. According to Huber, the labourers are ex- 

 tremely fond of the ova of the female, and sometimes, in her absence, even 

 break open the cells in which they are deposited, in order to suck the 

 milky fluid they contain! a most extraordinary fact, which seems to belie 

 the known attachment of the labourers for the germs of that race of which 

 they are the protectors and guardians. The wax produced by them, ac- 

 cording to this same naturalist, has the same origin as that of our domestic 

 Bee, or is merely elaborated honey that also transudes through the intervals 

 of some of the abdominal annuli. 



Sometimes the social Apiariae have no spines at the extremity of their 

 posterior tibiae, as in 



APIS, Lat. 



Or that of the Bee properly so called, where the first joint of the poste- 

 rior tarsi of the labourers forms a long square, and is furnished on the inner 

 side with a silken down divided into transverse or striated bands. 



Apis mellifica, L. (The Honey-Bee). Blackish; scutellum and abdomen 



