90 BEES AND BEE-KEEP'.NG. 



Apiary," derives his chief facts; but, unfortunately, 

 he has added to these several statements which are 

 astoundingly inaccurate, and from which our minds 

 must be freed at once, if we are to have any intelli- 

 gent idea at all of the tongue of the bee. Since his 

 book has been largely read in this country, and its 

 teaching generally accepted as the result of those 

 microscopic examinations of which it continually 

 speaks, I must refer to these and other errors, in the 

 interest of naturalists and bee-keepers, as we pro- 

 gress ; and, happily, they are not those which, on 

 account of their difficulty, leave room for diversity 

 of opinion, but such as can easily be made clear, 

 even, in some cases, without a microscope. 



The mouths of all insects have the jaws moving 

 sideways. The caterpillar, which carves our cabbage- 

 leaves with an industry which cannot secure our ap- 

 proval, places itself at the edge of the leaf, driving one 

 jaw through the upper, the other through the lower sur- 

 face thereof. In like manner, our bee has its mandi- 

 bular, or outer jaws (m, Plate II.) at the right and left 

 of the upper lip, or labrum, which depends between, 

 and is provided with a row of delicate feeling hairs. 

 These jaws are notched, in the queen and drone 

 (Plate IV.), as we find them in wild bees, but are 

 entire (i.e., not notched) in the worker (Plate II.), 

 are very powerful, and serve, amidst many purposes, 

 to be noticed in due course, for biting, as well as 

 thinning out wax shreds in comb building. Beneath 

 the upper lip appears (at g) the front of the epi- 

 pharynx, covered by a delicate white membrane, and 

 containing an abundance of nerves, endowing it with 



