346 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
belonging to a distinct order, Diptera. These last, though only 
furnished with two wings, while the bees, and the whole order 
(Hymenoptera) to which they belong, have four, yet bear such a 
striking resemblance to the bees in company with which they 
are found, that an untrained observer would not, at all events 
on a first glance, perceive the existing difference. 
The bee family was termed by the great French naturalist, 
Latreille, Medlifera (honey-gatherers), or Anthophila (flower- 
lovers), both terms being characteristic of the general habits of 
the family. One of the most remarkable features in those kinds 
of bees which live in societies, as is well known in the case of 
the hive-bee, is the existence of [what was formerly called] a 
third sex, the neuter or worker; and there are other singular 
peculiarities of this kind in less known species, such as the 
existence of two distinct kinds of females. The material of 
which the egg-cells are composed is very various. The comb of 
the hive-bee, as is well known, is formed of wax, secreted in a 
peculiar manner, as described in hundreds of popular works ; 
but other species, though forming a comb almost identical in 
appearance, make it by the manipulation of certain substances 
which they reduce to a material more analogous to common 
manufactured paper than anything else ; while others, again, 
make cells with sand, moistened with a glutinous secretion, 
which reduces it to a kind of tenacious cement. Some of these 
species, again, collect an inferior kind of honey, while others 
only collect pollen, of which they place a small mass or ball in 
each cell in which an egg is to be deposited, so as to form a 
supply of food for the grub or larva to subsist on till full grown. 
The exactly sufficient quantity is prepared by the instinct of 
the parent ; and, in fact, when that is consumed, the young grub 
bee has no choice but to subside at once into the torpor in which 
his change of organisation is to take place. This is a necessity, 
as he has no powers of locomotion, being a clumsy maggot-formed 
larva, which, placed at the bottom of a smooth-sided cell, would 
have no means of seeking food for himself. The tribes of 
parasitic bees which do not make cells to contain honey or 
pollen for the separate use of each infant bee, visit the nests 
of their more industrious cousins, and surreptitiously place an 
