Beautiful Exotic Bees. 335 



food for the young larvas, is generally rolled into little balls, or 

 pills, one being placed in each of the cells in which an egg is 

 to be deposited, so that the infant larvee may find food ready 

 prepared for immediate consumption ; but very little is accurately 

 known with regard to the preparation of the food for the infant 

 bees. It is probable that different kinds of food are prepared 

 for the different sexes ; so that in the case of the social bees, in 

 whose community there is a third, or neutral sex, and in some, 

 a second kind of female, three or four different sorts of food 

 may be prepared, just as cells of a distinctly different size are 

 constructed for the males, females, and neuters. The influence 

 of the peculiar food is no doubt very essential; and indeed some 

 entomologists have supposed that all the larvEe are, while in that 

 stage, perfectly neutral, the sex being eventually determined 

 by the kind of food upon which they are fed.* Under the in- 

 fluence of this view of the subject, it has been asserted that a 

 peculiar kind of honey prepared expressly to feed the larva des- 

 tined to become a queen, or foundress bee, will, if given to 

 another larva, not originally intended to become a queen, cause 

 that other larva to develop itself into a queen ; although, if fed 

 upon the food usually prepared for it, it would have remained 

 a neuter. Such is the wonderful power attributed to this " royal 

 jelly/' as the prepared queen-food has been termed. The feed- 

 ing of a neuter with the royal food is a course which some have 

 supposed (on perhaps insufficient grounds) to be resorted to in 

 cases where the queen bee of a hive has died, or been acciden- 

 tally destroyed. A larva is then selected, it is said, from among 

 the cells of the neutral larvee, neutral larvse having been proved 

 by dissection to be imperfect females, and fed upon the royal 

 jelly, the cell being enlarged to suit the size of a queen, for 

 whose bulk a cell originally constructed for a male, or a worker 

 would be insufficient. Some of the handsomest of the exotic 

 bees are parasites and, consequently, not either honey or pollen- 

 meat producers. Some, however, of those which are at present 

 assigned to this idle and worthless class may, with increased 

 knowledge of the subject, be found to have been unjustly treated 

 in being classed among parasites, and have eventually a place 

 assigned to them among their more respectable confreres the 

 harvesting bees. 



The ground upon which the fiat of parasitism has been pro- 

 nounced against certain bees, is founded upon peculiarities in 

 their anatomical structure; such, for instance, as the absence 

 of the large flattened hollow in the tibia of the hind leg, which 

 appears absolutely necessary to the honey carrier. Among the 

 andrenidee, however, the genus prosopis, though destitute of the 



* This view seems, however, inconsistent with the known fact, that the female 

 bee only deposits certain eggs in certain cells, and not elsewhere.* 



