THE BEE NATION. 255' 



CHAPTER XX. 

 ACTIVITY ABROAD. 



LESS complex, but heavier than the work within the hive 

 is that of the outside or foreign department. It con- 

 sists almost entirely of the important business of collecting 

 food for the young and for the hive, as well as the provisions 

 necessary for the support of the community during the long 

 winter season ; the honey or nectar from the flowers is 

 carried in a crop-like extension of the O3sophagus, the pollen 

 heaped in a shovel-like hollowed-out basin in the hind-legs, 

 and brought home in the form of round pellets. The bees 

 are sometimes seen so covered with pollen as to be scarcely 

 recognisable. With wonderful rapidity they pull the pollen 

 out of the flowers with their fore-legs, divide it with their 

 middle-legs, and then with these heap it on to their hind-legs 

 and knead it together. It is very worthy of note that in each 

 flight they collect only one kind of pollen and bring it home 

 unchanged, and by this means it is possible for the house- 

 bees, as before related, to sort and carry it into different 

 cells. This habit was remarked and described by Aristotle. 

 The nectar of flowers and all liquid foods are sucked up by 

 the proboscis, which they push into the nectaries. In many 

 of the flowers visited by them the nectaries are at the bottom 

 of a tube which is partly covered and closed by the stamens. 

 The bees find it out none the less, and if they cannot push 

 the proboscis through the natural opening, they bite a hole, 

 like the humble-bee, at the base of the corolla or even of the 

 calyx, so as to be able to reach with their proboscis the 

 place wherein nature has put the honey-glaud. As the jaws 

 of the bee are far weaker and more flexible than those of the 

 humble bee, the former very gladly makes use, wherever it is 

 possible, of the holes made by the latter in order to reach the 

 honey, and only falls back on self-help when the other fails. 

 On the other hand Andrenetcc and mason-bees, which also 



