140 DOMESTIC AOTMALS. 



the farina wanted for mating wax. Daring the summer they find food 

 for themselves, and pass their time in lounging from flower to flower, and 

 they are not found in the hive during the winter. By an extraordinary 

 instinct, they are massacred without pity by the females before this 

 period, in order to save the winter stock of honey, until they have 

 departed voluntarily to some nook where they may rest until wanted 

 in the next spring. These poor things have no weapons of defense. 



Working Bee. — The third class is the working bee. The working 

 bee is considerably less than either the queen bee or the drone. It is 

 about half an inch in length, of a blackish brown color, 

 covered with closely set hairs all over the body, which aid 

 it in carrying the farina it gathers from the flowers ; and 

 .on the tibia, or forearm, as it were, of the hind leg, is a 

 cavity of cup-like form, for the reception of the kneaded 

 little ball of pollen. It is the working bee which collects 

 honey and pollen, and which forms the cells, cleans out the 

 hive, protects the queen, looks after the condition of the young brood, 

 destroys or expels the drones, when these are no longer necessary to 

 the well-being of the community ; who, in short, performs all the offices 

 connected with the hive and its contents, save only those which have 

 reference to the reproduction of the species. The working bees are of 

 no sex, and are furnished with a horny and hollow sting, through which 

 poison is ejected into the wound it makes; this poison is of an acrid 

 character, and of great power in its efi'ects, proving fatal to any insect, 

 and instances are on record of its proving so to horses and cattle, nay, 

 even to human beings : when human beings, however, are stung (an 

 accident that will happen very seldom, if they use the precautions in 

 manipulating with their bees, that shall be detailed in the course of this 

 volume), they can instantaneously obtain relief by pressing upon the 

 point stung with the tube of a key ; this will extract the sting and re- 

 lieve the pain, and the application of common spirits of hartshorn will 

 instantaneously remove it ; the poison being of an acid nature, and being 

 thus at once neutralized by the application of this penetrating and vola- 

 tile alkali. 



WONDERFUL INSTINCTS AND CONTRIVANCES OF BEES.— The contriv- 

 ances of bees in the construction of their combs are amongst the most 

 wonderful works of God, as regards insect creation, " The form of the 

 comb is in every country the same, the proportions accurately alike, the 

 size the same, to the fraction of a line — go where you will, and the 

 form is proved to he that which 'the most refined analysis has enabled 

 mathematicians to discover, as of all others the best adapted for the 

 purpose of saving room, work, and materials. This discovery was only 

 made about a century ago ; nay, the instrument that enabled us to find 

 it out was unknown for half a century before that application of its 

 powers. And yet the bee has been for thousands of years, in all coun- 

 tries, unerringly working according to a fixed rule, which no one had 

 discovered until the eighteenth century." 



We may instance among other surprising illustrations of the ingenu- 

 ity of these wonderful creatures, that they lay the foundations of their 

 cities at the top of the hive, and build downward. They have straight 



