GENERAL HISTORY OF BEES. 47 



are used in the manipulations within the hive. Neither 

 the queen bee nor the drone have this structure, and in 

 the humble-bee and scopuliped bees the same joint is 

 uniformly covered with this brush without its being se- 

 parated into lines. 



The Abdomen of bees has many shapes, its form be- 

 ing elliptical, cylindrical, subcylindrical, clavate, coni- 

 cal or subconical, and sometimes semicircular, or con- 

 cavo-convex. It consists of six imbricated plates, called 

 segments, in the female, and of seven in the male; 

 iu the latter sex, in several genera, it takes beneath at 

 its base and at its apex, as well as at the extremity of 

 the latter, remarkable forms and armature. It is very 

 variously clothed and coloured, and sometimes extremely 

 gaily and elegantly so ; these various markings often giv- 

 ing the insects their specific characteristics ; the clothing 

 of the under side of this segment of the body, likewise, 

 furnishes subsidiary generic characters, especially in the 

 artisan bees, in whom it takes the place of the pos- 

 terior legs as a poUiniferous organ. This is possibly 

 because were the supply conveyed upon their poste- 

 rior legs it would be rubbed away as they entered the 

 narrow apertures of their nests. Nature does nothing in 

 vain, and there is evidently a purpose in this arrangement. 



If we can trace peculiarities of structure to efiBcient 

 reasons, differences of form may be rationally concluded 

 as having their cause too, even if it elude our explana- 

 tory research. Although the reason of peculiar structure 

 is not always obvious, it must exist, though undetected; 

 as, for instance, why in some bees, as in Megachile, 

 Osmia, Chelostoma, Anthidium, etc., the under side of the 

 abdomen should be furnished densely with hairs to carry 

 their provision of pollen home to their nest, when in other 



