8 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE- 



worms, &c, but she still keeps company with spiders. Arthrupoda 

 are divided into classes. The honey-bee belongs to the class Insecta. 

 Here she leaves the company of spiders and crabs, and is joined 

 with butterflies, ants, beetles, &c. The honey-bee is not much like 1 

 a beetle, but more so than it is like a spider. Compare the body of 

 a spider with that of a bee, you cannot but notice that the spider's 

 body is made up of two parts only, head and body, and her eight 

 legs are attached to the latter. The bulk of a bee's body is com- 

 posed of three parts — head, thorax, and abdomen. Bees have but 

 six legs, and these are attached to the thorax. Again, spiders lay 

 eggs, and so do bees, but the young hatched from spiders' eggs 

 differ greatly from those hatched from bees' eggs. From th& 

 spiders' eggs hatch out young spiders as perfect in form as their 

 parents. The young hatched from bees' or butterflies' eggs are as 

 dissimilar as an earthworm is from a, butterfly, and in few respect* 

 like the bee or butterfly that laid the egg. From the butterfly's 

 egg caterpillars are hatched. At first these young caterpillars are 

 very small; they grow rapidly, and when full grown, they enter 

 another stage of development — a chrysalis or pupa. This third 

 stage is so unlike the caterpillar it developed from, were we not 

 acquainted with the fact, it could not be conceived that it is in any 

 way connected with the parent that laid the egg. In course of 

 time, from this strange-looking chrysalis, a perfected bee or butter- 

 fly emerges. Spiders belong to the sub-kingdom Annulosa, and to- 

 the division Arthropoda, but not to the class Insecta, because they 

 do not go through those stages in developing to the perfect form or 

 imago, as bees, butterflies, &c, do. Spiders change from egg to 

 imago only. Here the honey-bee must part from the company 

 of butterflies, beetles, &c. These latter are insects as much as- 

 bees are, but there is a great difference between them, chiefly in 

 their wings.. Butterflies belong to the order of insects termed' 

 Lepidoptera, i.e., insects having wings covered with feathery scales,, 

 and beetles to the order Coleoptera, their true wings being pro- 

 tected under horny cases. Bees to the order Hymenoptera because 

 their membrane wings are thin, fibrous, and interwoven like net- 

 work. This order {Hymenoptera) contains the largest number of 

 families in the insect world. Some of them are very remarkable for 

 their social habits and wonderful instinctive traits of character. The= 

 order Hymenoptera is narrowed down into families — Apidce. In- 

 it are included ants, hornets, wasps, ichneumons, bees, &c. All 

 these are very bee-like in their general form. We have not as yet. 



