BEE MANUAL. 61 
the poison, which is conveyed down the hollow tube inside of 
each, finds vent by small side openings to the barbs at HH. It 
appears that when the wound is first pierced by the smooth and 
highly polished point of the awl D, a sliding motion is com- 
municated to the barbed lancets by the muscles shown at J and 
kK, and the poison is pumped into the wound through the 
centre cavity E; the barbed lancets are then driven in by 
alternate motions, and at the same time the centre cavity is 
closed by valves at the root of the sting, and the poison is 
forced through the tubes in the hollow lancets, and through 
the side openings near the barbs. The barbs having once 
penetrated any tough material, such as the human skin, cannot 
be withdrawn by a direct pull. The bee, if left to itself, will 
gradually work round and round until it screws out the sting, 
but if it be abruptly shaken or brushed off, the whole sting is 
torn out of its body and left behind. In that case the muscles 
will continue to work and to force poison into the wound for 
some time, if the sting be not carefully extracted, which 
should be done without squeezing the poison reservoirs at its 
base. The body of a bee that had been dead for hours has 
been known to sting in that way. ‘The injury occasioned to a 
bee by the tearing out of its sting must be very severe, and it 
has been generally supposed that they must die immediately 
afterwards. Sir John Lubbock, however, in his work on “ Ants, 
Bees, and Wasps,” says: ‘Though bees that have stung and 
lost their sting always perish, they do not die immediately, 
and in the meantime they show little sign of suffermg from 
_ the terrible injury.” He mentions having seen a bee after 
losing its sting, remain twenty minutes on the floor-board, 
enter the hive, return in an hour, feed quietly on some honey, 
and again return to the hive. Mr. A. I. Root says he has 
kept bees some time in confinement after being so injured, 
“and could not see but they flew off just as well as bees that 
had not lost their sting.” He even inclines to think they may 
live and gather honey afterwards. 
Recent researches by the French naturalist, M. G. Carlet, 
show that the two glands secrete two different sorts of liquids, 
the combined action of which makes the poison so virulent. 
In the translation of M. Carlet’s paper, given in the American 
Apiculturist of December, 1884, it is stated that although the 
stinging of a fly by a bee causes the instantaneous death of 
