36 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



of the wings, while their forms are such, that no draw- 

 ing professing to embrace them all could do more 

 than give an inadequate idea. The main ones, in 

 the worker and drone, lie in the anterior part of 

 the abdomen, on each side, communicating with the 

 spiracles ; but in the queen they are greatly reduced, 

 to give room for the ovaries. 



The spiracles are simple in the larva {sp, Fig. 4), 

 and twenty-two in number (on each side ten well- 

 developed and one rudimentary, the latter vanishing 

 altogether before the last moult. The oft-repeated 

 statement that they are eighteen in all is an error). 

 In the adult, they are more complex, capable of 

 voluntary closing, and so arranged that foreign 

 bodies cannot accidentally enter, while their number 

 is only fourteen — five on each side of the abdomen, 

 and one behind the insertion of each wing. 

 During the period of pupa-hood some of the rings 

 possessed by the larva disappear, while the spiracles 

 they carried vanish. Hence, the adult bee has 

 fewer than the grub, whence it came. In the 

 drone, the spiracles are much stronger and larger, 

 and so more easily studied than in the worker. They 

 are furnished with an apparatus to add to the noise 

 of the insect's flight, which will be more fully noticed 

 by-and-by, are surrounded by delicate protectino- 

 hairs, to save them from dust, and number sixteen 

 in consequence of the drone having an additional 

 abdominal segment. The normal respirations of the 

 bee, when at rest, varying from twenty to fifty per 

 minute, are much influenced by external temperature 

 by the activity of the stock, and by the amount of 



