APIS. 335 



have been noticed by observers as varying with their 

 occupation and duties, but as they are all constructed 

 in the same manner, with precisely the same organs, 

 which are of the same form and in the same situation, 

 this must be a mere imaginative surmise. Their simi- 

 larity of structure permits them, collectively, to apply 

 themselves to the same occupations which the needs of 

 the community may at any moment demand. Taking 

 them separately with their distinctive occupations at any 

 given time, without implying by it a permanent separa- 

 tion of classes, we find them to consist of wax secreters, 

 builders or cell-sculpturers, honey collectors, pollen col- 

 lectors, propolis collectors, nurses of the young, venti- 

 lators, undertakers to carry off the dead, who are perhaps 

 also the scavengers which cleanse away any occasional 

 dirt, sentinels to guard the hive outside and inside, and 

 attendants upon the queen, or as the " ' Times •* Bee 

 Master " very aptly designates them " ladies in waiting," 

 and at all times many slumberers are reposing from 

 their toils. That all these duties are transferable, and 

 consequently are transferred indifferently from one to 

 the other, is implied by their general capacity for ful- 

 filling them resulting from this identity of structure, 

 which will be understood as not at all infringed by the 

 separate capacities I unfold as devolving from their 

 temporarily limited functions, all being simultaneously 

 in action, but distributed amongst the several indi- 

 viduals. 



The first important occupation of the worker is the 

 secretion of wax for the structure of the cells, and, to 

 effect this, honey must be collected, for it is solely from 

 the digestion of honey that the wax is produced. This 

 in due course passes from the first stomach or honey- 



