FOREIGN GENERA OP liEES. 107 



hollowed within, rather like a spoon, which structure 

 would of course imply a difference of economy. 



A further characteristic of these genera, and in which 

 they participate with Apis, is the deficiency of spurs to 

 the posterior tibiis, which separates them from all other 

 genera of bees, as also from Bombus, which has two, yet 

 with which, in point of their economy, they more closely 

 assimilate than with Apis. They are the South Ameri- 

 can and Australian indigenous representatives of the 

 genus Apis, and are found likewise in Java and Sumatra, 

 and in some of the larger and extreme islands of the 

 Indian Archipelago, thus also similarly in countries 

 where marsupial animals occur. Like Apis, they are 

 social in their habits ; but their neuters only are as yet 

 known, neither males nor females having been described. 

 They are reputed to be stingless, and to make honey 

 aud wax in enormous quantities. The combs in Melli- 

 pona are attached either to the branches of trees or are 

 suspended from them, but how they are enveloped for 

 security is not reported, but sometimes, like Apis, they 

 construct them within hollow trees aud in the cavities 

 of rocks, as in Trigona, in like manner as Apis does in 

 its natural state. Their communities are not so large 

 as those of the hive bee, and the cells of their combs are 

 less perfectly hexagonal, the wax being expended upon 

 them in denser quantities, whereas the hive bee is ex- 

 ceedingly parsimonious in the use of this material, a cir- 

 cumstance arising possibly from the different and more 

 difficult mode the latter have of obtaining it. In the 

 latter it is a secretion ; but these exotic genera possibly 

 collect their wax ready-made by the exudation of plants, 

 and, thus, having more readily obtained it, they are more 

 lavish in its use. 



