324 BRITISH BEES. 



at home, consists in the vertical enlargement of his 

 compound eyes, which meet over the brow, and in the 

 posterior expansion of the inferior wings, which take a 

 broad backward sweep, giving the insect larger powers 

 of flight, but perhaps required as much by its own bulki- 

 ness and weight as for the purpose of ascending above 

 his bride in the upper regions of the air ; but that its 

 weight cannot be the sole reason is testified by the 

 analogous structure in the male of the genus Astata, 

 one of the fossorial Hymenoptera, where a similar ex- 

 pansion of the inferior wing is concomitant with a similar 

 development of the compound eyes, yet in which the 

 abdomen is very small, and this power is therefore evi- 

 dently given to these merely to increase the velocity or 

 the duration of their flight. The rest of the structure of 

 these drones disables them, like all other male bees, 

 for any labour ; and as they must be sustained as long 

 as they may be of service, the possibility of which termi- 

 nates with the last issue of a swarm from the hive, a 

 period appreciated by the instinct of the workers, they 

 are then driven forth, but it is in dispute whether the 

 workers destroy them, or whether their destruction is 

 effected by exposure and hunger, or by the natural limita- 

 tion of their lives, for although their tongues are formed 

 upon the same type as that of the worker, it is con- 

 siderably less developed, and appears to be adapted only 

 to obtain nutriment from the honey already collected in 

 the cells, as they seem even deficient in the instinct to 

 gather it for themselves from flowers, never being ob- 

 served to visit them. 



The last inhabitant of the hive is the worker, or 

 abortive female, whose labour has several phases. A 

 difference of size amongst them has been supposed to 



