HYMENOPTERA. 267 
are known to children, who frequently put them to death in order to 
obtain the honey contained within their body. They inhabit subter- 
ranean nests in communities of fifty or sixty, and sometimes of two or 
three hundred individuals. The society is dissolved on the approach 
of winter. It is composed of males distinguished by their small size, 
reduced head, narrow mandibles, bearded, and terminated by two 
teeth, and frequently by a difference of colours; of females, which 
are larger than the others, furnished with mandibles formed like a 
Spuon, as is also the case with those of the neuwters or /abourers ; the 
latter, as to size, are intermediate between the males and females; 
Reaumur however says that there are two varieties; the first, 
stronger and of a moderate size, and the second, smaller, which ap- 
peared to him to be the most lively and active. Huber, Jun., has 
verified this fact. According to him, several of the labourers which 
are hatched in the spring copulate with the males that have pro- 
ceeded from their common mother, and lay soon after, but produing 
males only, which are to fecundate the ordinary females, or those 
which appear late in the season, and are destined to establish a new 
colony in the spring of the ensuing year. All the others, the little 
females not excepted, perish. 
Some of the ordinary females which have escaped the severity of 
the winter take advantage of the first fine weather to construct their 
nests. One species—Apis lapidaria—establishes itself on the sur- 
face of the earth under stones, but all the others form their habita- 
tion in it, frequently descending to a depth of one or two feet, in the 
Way we are about to descrbe. Dry plains, fields, and hills are the lo- 
calities they select. These subterranean cavities, which are of consi- 
derable extent and wider than high, have the figure of adome. The 
ceiling is constructed with earth and with moss, carded by these In- 
sects, which they transport there, fibre by fibre, entering the cavity 
backwards. A coating of coarse wax is laid over its walls. Some- 
times a simple opening, designedly left at the bottom of the nest, 
serves 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, mammiliform 
masses of wax there, called patée by Reaumur, and which, on ac- 
count of their shape and colour, he compares to truffles. Their in- 
ternal cavities are destined to enclose the eggs and larve. 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 co- 
coons, 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 infe- 
riorly, when the perfect Insects have left them. Reaumur says that 
the larvee 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 quantity of pollen moistened with 
honey, with which the labourers carefully supply them; when it is 
consumed they perforate the coyer of their cells, furnish them with 
more, and shut them up again, They even enlarge them when the 
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