26 Order of the Honey-bee. 
ORDER OF THE HONEY-BEE, 
The honey-bee belongs to the order Hymenoptera (from 
two Greek words meaning membrane and wings), which 
also includes the wasps, ants, ichneumon-flies, gall-flies, and 
saw-flies. -This group contains insects which possess a 
tongue by which they may suck (Fig. 35, 7), and strong 
jaws (Fig. 42) for biting. Thus the bees can sip the hon- 
eyed sweets of flowers, and also gnaw away mutilated 
comb. They have, besides, four wings, and undergo com- 
plete transformations. 
There are among insects strange resemblances., Insects 
of one order will show a marked likeness to those of 
another, This is known as mimicry, and sometimes is 
wonderfully striking between very distant groups. ~Dar- 
win and Wallace have shown this to be a developed pecul- 
iarity, not always possessed by the ancestors of the 
animal, and that it comes through the laws of. variation 
and natural selection to serve the purpose of protection. 
Right here we have a fine illustration of this mimicry. 
Just the other day I received, through Mr. A. I. Root, an 
insect which he and the person sending it to him supposed 
to be a bee, and he desired to know whether it was a mal- 
formed honey-bee, or some other species, This insect, 
though looking in a general way much like.a bee, had only 
two wings, had no jaws, and its antenne were close together 
in front and mere stubs. In fact, it was no bee at all, but 
belonged to the order Diptera, or two-winged flies, I 
have received several similar insects, with like inquiries. 
Among Diptera there are several families, as the Estridz, 
or bot-flies, some of the Asilidz, or robber-flies (Fig. 196), 
which are often fierce enemies of our bees, the Syrphidz 
—-a very useful family, as the larve or maggots live on 
plant lice -whose members are often seen sipping sweets 
from flowers or trying to rob the honey and other bees 
—the one referred to above belonged to this family— 
and the Bombyliidz, which in color, form, and hairy cov- - 
ering are strikingly like wild and domesticated bees. The 
maggots of some of these feed on the larve of various of 
our wild bees, and of course the mother fly must steal into 
