30 Family Apidce. 



pollen. These parasites illustrate mimicry, already described, 

 as they look so like the foster-mothers of their own young 

 that unscientific eyes would often fail to distinguish them. 

 Probably the bees thus imposed upon are no sharper, or 

 they would refuse ingress to these merciless vagrants. 



The larva; (Fig. 24, _/) of all insects of this family are 

 niaggot-like, wrinkled, footless, tapering at both ends, and 

 as already stated, have their food prepared for them. 

 They are helpless, and thus all during their babyhood 

 — the larva state — the time when all insects are most 

 ravenous, and the only time when many insects take food, 

 the time when all growth in size, except such enlargement 

 as is required by egg-development, occurs, these infant 

 bees have to be fed by their mothers or elder sisters. They 

 have a mouth with soft lips, and weak jaws, yet it is doubt- 

 ful if all or much of their food is taken in at this opening. 

 There is some reason to believe that the honey-bees espe- 

 cially, like many maggots — such as the Hessian-fly larvae — 

 absorb much of their food through the body walls. From 

 the mouth leads the intestine, which has no anal opening. 

 So there are no excreta other than gas and vapor, except 

 the small amount which remains in the stomach and intes- 

 tine, which, as is well known are shed with the skin at the 

 lime of the last molt. What commendation for their food, 

 nearly all capable of nourishment, and thus assimilated! 



To this family belongs the genus of stingless bees, Mel- 

 ipona, of Mexico and South America, which store hone\' 

 not only in the hexagonal brood-cells but in great wax res- 

 ervoirs. They, like the unkept hive-bee, build in hollow 

 logs. They are exceedingly numerous in each colony, and 

 it has thus been thought that there was more than one 

 queen. They are also very prodigal of wax, and thus may 

 possess a prospective commercial importance in these days 

 of artificial comb-foundation. In this genus the basal joint 

 of the tarsus is triangular, and there are two submarginal 

 cells, not three, to the front wings. They are also smaller 

 than our common bees, and have wings that do not reach 

 the tip of their abdomens. Mr. T. F. Bingham, inventor 

 of the bee-smoker, brought a colony of the stingless bees 

 from Mexico to Michigan. The climate seemed unfavor- 



