368 INSECTS AT HOME. 



CHAPTEE V. 

 SOCIAL BEES. 



The Social Bees may be roughly divided into two groups, 

 the Wild Bees and the Domesticated Bees. I use the latter 

 terms intentionally in the plm'al number, because there are 

 several species of Domesticated Bees, two of which are culti- 

 vated in this country. We will begin with the Wild Soc ial 

 Bees, popularly; known as Humble Bees, Hummel Bees, or 

 DuMBLE Bees, the popular name evidently referring to the 

 deep humming sound which they produce when o n the wing. 

 In this country the gr eater part of tliein ; utejone genus, 



namely Bombus, of which we will take some of the most 

 conspicuous insects as examples of the rest. 



In this genus of Bees, the body is egg-shaped, and thickly 



covered with hair. The head is somewhat triangular in form, 



and t]ie antennae are slender, elbowed, and a little longer 



than tile head. On the crown there is a semilunar groove or 



Trapression, in which the ocelli are placed. The mandib les are 



stout, and their tips are rounded and grooved. The upper 



\^^ngs have one marginal and three submarginal cells. The 



/ females have on the tibia of the hind legs a thick fringe of 



I stiff hairs, which forms a sort of basket for carrying the 



I pollen with which the young are fed. This apparatus is 



J scientifically termed the corbicula, or little basket. _In th e 



males, the mandibles are fringed with cm-l ed hair, and there 



are no pollen-baskets on the hind legs. 



The history of these Bees is at once interesting, simple, and 

 perplexing, and perhaps is the more interesting on account of 

 the extraordinary and apparently contradictory mixture of 

 bimplicity and complication. Everyone knows the Humble 

 Bees, but it is not everyone who can say, upon seeing a 





