30 Family Apide. 
pollen. These parasites illustrate mimicry,alread y described, 
as they look so like the foster-mothers of their own young 
that unscientific eyes would often fail to distinguish them. 
Probably the bees thus imposed upon are no sharper, or 
they would refuse ingress to these merciless vagrants. 
The larve (Fig. 24, f) of all insects of this family are 
maggot-like, wrinkled, footless, tapering at both ends, and 
as already. stated, have their food prepared for them. 
They are helpless, and thus all during their babyhood 
—the larva state—the time when all insects are most 
ravenous, and the only time when many insects take food, 
the time when all growth in size, except such enlargement 
as is required by egg-development, occurs, these infant 
bees have to be fed by their mothers or elder sisters. They 
have a mouth with soft lips, and weak jaws, yet it is doubt- 
ful if all or much of their food is taken in at this opening. 
There is some reason to believe that the honey-bees espe- 
cially, like many maggots—such as the Hessian-fly larve— 
absorb much of their food through the body walls. From 
the mouth leads the intestine, which has no anal opening. 
So there are no excreta other than gas and vapor, except 
the small amount which remains in the stomach and intes- 
tine, which, as is well known are shed with the skin at the 
time of the last molt. What commendation for their food, 
nearly all capable of nourishment, and thus assimilated! 
To this family belongs the genus of stingless bees, Mel- 
ipona, of Mexico and South America, which store honey 
not only in the hexagonal brood-cells but in great wax res- 
ervoirs. They, like the unkept hive-bee, build in hollow 
logs. They are exceedingly numerous in each colony, and 
it has thus been thought that there was more than one 
queen. They are also very prodigal of wax, and thus may 
possess a prospective commercial importance in these days 
of artificial comb-foundation. In this genus the basal joint 
of the tarsus is triangular, and there are two submarginal 
cells, not three, to the front wings. They are also smaller 
than our common bees, and have wings that do not reach 
the tip of their abdomens. Mr. T. F. Bingham, inventor 
of the bee-smoker, brought a colony of the stingless bees 
from Mexico to Michigan. The climate seemed unfavor- 
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