2l8 



ELEMENTARY ZOOLOGY 



brood of males and females appears, after which the 

 original process is repeated. 



The honey-bees and ants show a highly specialized 

 communal life, with a well-marked division of labor and 

 an individual sacrifice of independence and personal 

 advantage which is remarkable. Their communities are 

 large, including thousands of individuals, and the struc- 

 tural differences among the males, females, and workers 

 are readily recognizable. With the ants the workers may 

 be of two or more sorts, a distinction into large and small 

 workers or worker majors and worker minors being not 

 uncommon. 



A honey-bee community, living in hollow tree or hive, 

 includes a queen or fertile female, a few hundred drones 

 or fertile males, and ten to forty thousand workers, in- 

 fertile females (fig. 80). The number of drones and 



FIG. 80. The honey-bee, Apis mellifica ; A, queen, B, drone, C, worker. 

 (From specimens.) 



workers varies, being smallest in winter. Each kind of 

 individual has a certain particular part of the work of the 

 whole community to do; the queen lays all the eggs, that 

 is, is the mother of the entire community; the drones act 

 simply as the royal consorts, fertilizing the eggs; while 

 the workers build the comb, produce the wax from 

 which the cells are constructed, bring in all the food con- 



