ph) INSECTA, 
bourers immediately clean out the vacant cells, in order that 
they may be prepared for the reception of another egg. This is 
not the case, however, with the royal cells; they are destroyed 
and new ones constructed, if necessary. ‘The eggs containing 
males are produced two months later, and those of the female 
soon after the latter. 
This succession of generations forms so many partitular 
communities, prepared to form new colonies, and known by the 
name of swarms. A single hive sometimes produces three or 
four; but the last are always small. Those which weigh from 
six to eight pounds are the best. Finding themselves too much 
confined in their habitation, they frequently leave their natal 
locality. Particular signs intimate to the owner the loss with 
which he is menaced ; he endeavours to prevent it, or to profit 
by the emigration. 
Dreadful combats sometimes take place among Bees. At a 
particular epoch in which the males become useless, the females 
having been fecundated—from the month of June to that of 
July—the labourers put them to death, extending the carnage 
even to the larvee and nymph of that sex. 
Bees have enemies both external and internal, and are subject 
to various diseases. 
The intelligent apiarist bestows particular attention on these 
animals, carefully selects, among the different kinds of hives 
that have been invented, that which is the least expensive in its 
construction, and the best adapted to preserve and rear them; 
he studies their habits, foresees the accidents with which they 
are threatened, and never has occasion to regret his labour and 
trouble. The origin of the attention bestowed upon Bees is lost 
in the remotest antiquity. With the ancient Egyptians the Bee 
was the hieroglyphic emblem of royalty. 
The true Bees are only found in the eastern continent; and 
those of southern and eastern Europe, and of Egypt, differ from 
those that inhabit France, which have been transported to Aine- 
rica and other places where they are now naturalized. 
The species found In the Isle of France and in Madagascar 
—A. unicolor, Lat.—produces honey called vert, or green, that 
is held in high estimation *. 
The last subgenus of the social Apiarize, or 
Meuipona, Idhg. Lat—Tricona, Jur., 
Js distinguished from the preceding one by the form of the first 
joint of the posterior tarsi, which is narrowed at base, or has the 
figure of a reversed triangle, and is destitute of strize on the silken 
brush of its inner side. There are but two complete cubital cells in 
the superior wings, while in the Bees there are three, the Jast linear 
and oblique ¥. 
* For the other species, see Lat., in the Obs. Zool. et Anal. of Messrs. Hum- 
boldt and Bonpland. 
+ Those species, in which the mandibles are not dentated, are the MELIPON&, 
properly so called. Those, in which they are, form the genus TRIGONA, See my 
Gener. Crust. et Insect., IV, 152 
