BEE MANUAL. 39 
Mr. F. A. Joyner, of North Adelaide, 8. A., at the suggestion 
of Mr. Bonney, very kindly sent me lately some specimens of 
native bees, accompanied by the following remarks :— 
‘‘T have observed them pretty closely for some time past, and find 
that they gather honey and pollen, are very swift in their movements, 
have particularly long stings and proboscis, and as late as last evening 
(April 16th, 1885), for the first time discovered that they exist in 
swarms, I was unfortunately unable to take the swarm, as the bees 
were disturbed before I reached them, and I was afterwards unable 
to find their new alighting place. It appeared an average-sized swarm, 
and moved similarly to our black bees, with the exception of moving 
much swifter.”’ 
I submitted the bees, which had been very much broken to 
Mr. T. J. Mulvany, for microscopical examination, and’he 
very kindly supplied me with the following information con- 
cerning their structure :— 
‘The rings on the abdomen, which are alternately black and silver- 
grey, are very handsome, and the three ‘subcostal cells’ in the front 
wings, as well as the hooklets in the under wings, beautifully deve- 
loped. The wings, compared with those of a common bee, measure as 
16 to 19, and as 11 to 13, which shows them to be 0°84 of the length; 
from this, and from appearance of head, legs, and abdomen, I take the 
live insect to be more than four-fifths of the size of the black bee and 
therefore larger than the Egyptian or the Palestine bee. The hind 
legs have the pollen basket and the long hairs on the ‘basal tar- 
sus,’ the front legs the peculiar spur at the knee joints, and both have 
a coating of silver-white hair on the outer side of the ‘tibia.’ The 
head is very handsome ; the compound eyes wide apart, with golden 
hairy forehead between. The mouth organs appear to me to be re- 
markable ; the mandibles are horny, with sharp double points like 
teeth. I should think this bee could bite as well as sting. The max- 
ille are also stiff, and, at least in the dry state, look like the beak of a 
bird. Icould also see the ‘labial palpi,’ but not the tongue itself. 
Altogether, to my unpractised eye, it looks more like a variety of the 
Apis mellifica than a different species. It would be very desirable to 
get some more specimens in a better state of preservation, and, if pos- 
sible, to take a swarm and try them in a hive.” 
From what I have heard of the wild or native bees in other 
parts of Australia, I take them all to be the same as those 
described. 
