THE HOME OF THE BEES. 
BY A. S. PACKARD, JR., M. D. 
Tue history of the Honey-bee, of its wonderful in- 
stincts, its elaborate cells and complex economy, have 
engrossed the attention of the best observers, even from 
the time of Virgil, who sang of the Ligurian bee. The 
literature of the art of bee-keeping is already very ex- 
tensive. Numerous bee journals and manuals of bee- 
keeping testify to the importance of this branch of agri- 
culture, while able mathematicians have studied the mode 
of formation of the hexagonal cells,* and physiologists 
have investigated the intricate, and, as yet, unsolved 
problems of the generation and development of the bee 
itself. 
In discussing these difficult questions, we must rise 
from the study of the simple to the complex, remember- 
ing that— 
“AN nature widens upward. Evermore, 
The simpler essence lower lies: 
owning more 
woins 
Discourse, more widely wise,” 
and not forget to study the humbler allies of the Honey- 
bee. We shall, in observing the habits and homes of the 
wild bees, gain a clearer insight into the mysteries of 
the hive. 
The great family of bees is divided into social and sol- 
itary species. The social kinds live in nests composed 
of numerous cells in which the young brood are reared. 
These cells vary in form from those which are quite reg- 
ularly hexagonal, like those of the Hive-bee, to those 
which are less regularly six-sided, as in 1 the Stingless-bee 
+ Š ation f the 
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