IV. INSECTA: HEXAPODA, HTMENOPTERA. 487 



other insects which they have paralyzed by a sting in the ventral cord. 

 Some true wasps have similar habits. Most wasps (VESPARLE) and bees 

 (APIARLE) have different habits. They bu/M wonderful homes of chewed 

 wood (the first pulp paper) or skilfully trimmed leaves, earth, etc., or of 

 wax which the animals (bees) secrete between the joints of the abdomen. 

 The nests, which are to contain the young, are either small tubes or 

 hexagonal cells which are united to horizontal or vertical combs; the food 

 is either honey, pollen, or chewed fruits. The fact that the offspring are 

 better protected when numerous individuals protect them has apparently 

 led in the wasps and bees to different grades of social states. The honey 

 bees (Apis mellifica*), which live in a colony, consist of three kinds of 

 individuals distinguished by structure of the head (fig. 520) and other 



FIG. 520. Heads of Apis mellifica. (After Boas.) a, queen; b, worker; c, drone with 

 the compound eyes meeting above. 



features : a single queen, some hundred drones, and about ten thousand 

 workers. These last are females and hence have stings, but have rudi- 

 mentary functionless sexual organs; their work being to build the home, 

 to protect the young, and provide food for the winter. The business of 

 egg-laying belongs to the queen, who copulates but once, at the beginning 

 of her reign, when she and a drone take a wedding flight. For the four 

 years of her life the sperm retains its vitality in the receptaculum seminis. 

 In laying the eggs she can permit entrance or not of the spermatozoa at 

 will and thus produce males or females. A queen who has not been fer- 

 tilized or who has exhausted her supply can only lay drone eggs. The 

 further fate of the eggs depends upon the food of the larvae; with a small 

 amount of bee bread (pollen) workers are produced, but the same larva 

 placed in a larger cell and fed with the * royal jelly ' (much like blanc 

 mange in appearance) will develop into a sexually mature queen. On 

 escape from the queen-cell the young queen with a part of the colony 

 swarm and start a new colony. This operation may be repeated once or 

 twice, but if there be danger of depleting the hive the remaining queen 

 Iarva3 are killed. Wasps and bumble-bee colonies last but a year and are 

 reformed by a fertilized female which has lived through the winter. 



The ants (FORMICARY) have gone beyond the bees in the social organi- 

 zation. They have also departed most from the other Hymenoptera in 

 that the workers, sometimes the sexual individuals, are wingless and the 

 sting is rudimentary or entirely lacking. Only the Poneridee sting like 

 bees and wasps ; the others bite and squirt the secretion of the persistent 

 poison gland (formic acid) into the wound. The homes of the ants are 



