394 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



There are two descriptions of males — one not bigger than the workers, 

 supposed to be produced from a male egg laid in a*worker's cell. The 

 common males are much larger, and will counterpoise two workers. 



I have before observed to you that there are two sorts of workers, the 

 wax-makers and nurses.^ They may also be further divided into fertile 

 and sterile^: for some of them; which in their infancy are supposed to 

 have partaken of some portion of the royal jelly, lay male eggs. There 

 is found in some hives, according to Huber, a kind of bees, which, from 

 having less down upon the head and thorax, appear blacker than the 

 others, by whom they are always expelled from the hive, and often killed. 

 Perfect ovaries, upon dissection, were discovered in these bees, though 

 not furnished with eggs. This discovery induced M"®- Jurine, the lady 

 who dissected them, to examine the common workers in the same way ; 

 and she found in all that she examined, what had escaped Swammerdam, 

 perfect though sterile ovaries.^ It is worth inquiry, though M. Huber 

 gives no hint of this kind, whether these were not in fact superannuated 

 bees, that could no longer take part in the labors of the hive. Thorley 

 remarks, which confirms this idea, that if you closely observe a hive of 

 bees in July, you may perceive many amongst them of a dark color, with 

 wings rent and torn ; but that in September not one of them is to be seen.'* 

 Huber does not say whether the wings of the bees in question were 

 lacerated; but in superannuated insects the hair is often rubbed off the 

 body, which gives them a darker hue than that of more recent individuals 

 of the same species. Should this conjecture turn out true, their banish- 

 ment and destruction of the seniors of the hive would certainly not show 

 our little creatures in a very amiable point of view. Yet it seems the 

 law of their nature to rid their community of all supernumerary and 

 useless members, as is evident from their destruction of the drones after 

 their work is done. 



It is not often that insects have been weighed ; but Reaumur's curiosity 

 was excited to know the weight of bees ; and he found that 336 weighed 

 an ounce, and 5376 a pound. According to John Hunter, an ale-house 

 pint contains 2160 workers. 



The head triangular. The mandibles are prominent, so as to terminate the head in aa 

 angle, tooihless, and forcipate. The tongue and maxilla are long and incurved ; the labrum 

 and antenna black. 



In the trunk the te^rtlm are black. The wings extend only to the apex of the fourth seg- 

 ment of the abdomen. The legs are all black, with the digits only rather piceous. The 

 posterior tibict are naked above, exteriorly longiludinally concave, and interiorly longitu- 

 dinally convex ; furnished with lateral and recumbent hairs to form the corbicula, and armed 

 at the end with the pecten. The upper surface of the posterior plania resembles that of the 

 tibia ; underneath they are furnished with a scopiila or brush of stiff hairs set in rows: at 

 the base they are armed with stiff" bristles, and exteriorly with an acute appendage or auricle. 



The abdomen\s a little longer than the head and trunk together ; oblong, and rather heart- 

 shaped ; a transverse section of it is triangular. It is covered with longish, flavo-pallid 

 hairs : the first segment is short with longer hairs ; the base of the three intermediate seg- 

 ments is covered, and as it were banded, with pale hairs. The apex of the three interme- 

 diate ventral segments is rather fulvescent, and their base is distinguished on each side by 

 a trapeziform wax pocket covered by a thin membrane. The sling, or rather vagina of the 

 spicula, is straight. 



• Seep. 311. 



* In hives where a queen laying male eggs has been killed, the workers continue to make 

 only male cells, though supplied with a fertile queen, and the fertile workers lay eggs in 

 them. Schirach, 258. 



3 Huber, ii. 425. * Thorley On Bees, 179. 



