Structure, Habits, and Products 1 5 



So we see the honey-bees of this country have a great 

 many near relatives ; indeed, counting the short-tongued 

 bees that do not lay up honey but feed their young on 

 balls of pollen or pollen and honey mixed together, there 

 are thousands of species. 



Even among the honey-making bees there are several 

 genera and many species scattered over the world. The 

 bumble-bee alone, which has a long tongue, though it 

 does not always store up honey, has over fifty species 

 in this country. 



But our chief concern is with those bees that have been 

 induced to lay up stores of honey in hives by which man 

 has profited, and which in all but tropical countries belong 

 to the genus Apis, of which again there is a number of 

 species. 



The Hymenoptera as an Order stand high in the scale of 

 life, and of them the bees take first rank, — the hive-bee 

 being by some placed next to man in point of intelligence. 

 Certainly they stand at the very top of the insect scale. 



The innumerable " bees " flying about the flowers in 

 summer are not all hive-bees. Many of them are the 

 wild short-tongued bees searching for pollen, and these 

 are soon recognized by their small size and slender forms. 



The bumble-bees, on the other hand, which belong to the 

 genus Bombus, are larger than the hive-bees, though some 

 of the smaller workers occasionally approximate the hive- 

 bee in size, but bees of this genus can always be recog- 

 nized by their black and yellow hairy coats. Bumble-bees 

 are covered with hairs that form a thick short fur of alter- 

 nating black and yellow stripes or areas over their whole 

 bodies excepting sometimes a round bald spot on top of 

 the thorax. Hive-bees have few or no hairs on the upper 

 rings of the abdomen, and present a very different appear- 

 ance from their furry relatives. 



