QUEEN-REARING IN ENGLAND. 79 



tibia was crammed witii pollen, this substance extending in 

 an unbroken mass into the corbicula. It then occurred to 

 me that the use of the auricle might be to push the pollen 

 into the corbicula, and upon looking for confirmation, I 

 saw a beautiful apparatus for carrying out the work as I had 

 imagined. 



An account of this apparatus and how it evidently works, 

 was given in an article of mine, published in the British Bcc 

 Journal of Dec. 14, 1911, and in the following spring I 

 was able to present further evidence to prove that it is 

 employed in the way there explained. See the British Bee 

 Journal oi April 11, 191 2.* 



We may commence the study of the process of pollen- 

 collecting by noting that the metatarsi of all three parts of 

 legs are clothed on their inner sides with brushes of stiff 

 bristles. Now these brushes occur in the solitary bees as 

 well as in the honey-bee and bumble-bee. Their function 

 is to brush clean the coat of fur that clothes the body, more 

 especially to clean out of it the pollen with which the bee, 

 when it visits the flowers, gets dusted. The brushes on the 

 fore metatarsi are used especially to clean the head and 

 tongue, the brushes of the middle metatarsi to clean the 

 thorax, and the brushes of the hind metatarsi the abdomen. 

 If we catch a honey-bee in the act of collecting pollen we 

 shall find that the brushes on the hind metatarsi are filled 

 with pollen made into a paste with some kind of liquid, 

 and if we taste the pollen we shall be led to conclude, by 

 its sweetness, that this liquid is honey. Passing over, for 

 the moment, the question of how the pollen gets moistened 

 with honey and accumulates on the hind metatarsal brushes, 

 we may ask : How is it transferred from these brushes to 

 the corbicula? Cheshire {Bees and Bee-keeping, 1886, 

 Vol. I., page 131) states that the legs are crossed, and the 

 metatarsus naturally scrapes its brush on the upper edge 

 of the opposite tibia, but this I find i s not the case. If a 



* Dr. D. B. Casteel in a paper pnbjished Oct. t. "12. f;^^ ^drralar 

 No. 161 of the Bureau of Entomology of the TJmted States Department 

 of Agriculture, entitled The Manipulation of the Wax Scales of the Honey 

 Bee. states that the so-called wax-pincers have nothing whatever to do 

 witfi the removal of the wax scales, but that the wax scale is Pierced by 

 a few of the stiff spines on the distal end of the metatarsus and is then 

 drawn from its pocket and remains adherin? to these spines uutil removed 

 for mastication. See also The Anatomy of the Honey-hee, 1910, by K. ]i. 

 Snodgrase, p. 63. 



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