iS6 



FIELD ZOOLOGY. 



hymenopters ; and the known ways in which the members 

 of the group use this sense is truly wonderful, to say 

 nothing of the marvelous actions in which we can only 

 conjecture that smell plays a part. You have known 

 bees to find honey which it was impossible for them to 



have seen, and which they must 

 have found by their sense of 

 smell. Ants will crawl long dis- 

 tances toward a bait of honey. 

 Ants know each other and the 

 home nest and the rival commu- 

 nities by the sense of smell. 



A honeybee community con- 

 sists usually of about ten thou- 

 sand individuals in the winter, 

 to about fifty thousand in the 

 summer, one of which is a fertile 

 female, the queen. Fifty to 

 eighty, or several hundred of the 

 total number are drones, and the 

 remainder are workers, that is, 

 females for the most part incapa- 

 ble of laying eggs, though there 

 have been known cases of egg- 

 laying by a worker bee. These 

 workers attend to th^ work of the 

 community strictly. There is no division of interests 

 here; the interest of one is the interest of the community. 

 An exception to this oneness of aim must be made 

 in the case of the drones. These individuals neither 

 labor at any given part of the whole task, nor do they 

 even provide food for themselves. Not even a job as 

 policeman of the community attracts them, and this is a 



Fig. 63. — Head and mouth 

 parts of honeybee, much en- 

 larged. Note the short, trowel- 

 like mandibles for moulding 

 wax, and the proboscis for suck- 

 ing flower nectar. (Kellogg.) 



