PERFECT SOCIETIBS OF INSECTS. 359 
There are two descriptions of males — one not bigger than the workers, 
supposed to be produced froma male egg laid in a worker's cell. The 
common males are much larger, and will counterpoise two workers. 
I have before observed to you that there are two sorts of workers, the 
wax-makers and nurses.!. They may also be further divided into fertile 
and sterile? : for some of them, which in their infancy are supposed to 
have partaken of some portion of the royal jelly, lay male eggs. There 
is found in some hives, according to Huber, a kind of bees, which, from 
having less down upon the head and thorax, appear blacker than the 
others, by whom they are always expelled from the hive, and often killed. 
Perfect ovaries, upon dissection, were discovered in these bees, though 
not furnished with eggs. This discovery induced Mlle. Jurine, the lady 
who dissected them, to examine the common workers in the same way ; 
and she found in all that she examined, what had escaped Swammerdam, 
perfect though sterile ovaries. It is worth inquiry, though M. Huber 
gives no hint of this kind, whether these were not in fact superannuated 
bees, that could no longer take part in the labours of the hive. Thorley 
remarks, which confirms this idea, that if you closely observe a hive of 
bees in July, you may perceive many amongst them of a dark colour, with 
fourteen joints, including the radicle, the fourth and fifth being very short, and not 
easily distinguished, 
The trunk is large. The wings are longer than the body. ‘The /egs are short and 
slender, ‘The posterior tibie ave long, club-shaped, and covered with inconspicuous 
hairs, The posterior planta are furnished underneath with thick-set scopule, which 
they use to brush their bodies. 
The claw joints are fulvescent. Z 
‘The abdomen is cordate, very short, being scarcely so long as the head and trunk 
together, consisting of seven segments, which are fulvous at their apex. The first 
segment is longer than any of the succeeding ones, and covered above with rather 
long hairs. he second and third dorsal segments are apparently naked; but, 
under a triple lens, in a certain light, some adpressed hairs may be perceived ; —the 
remaining ones are hairy, the three last being inflexed. The ventral segments are 
very narrow, hairy, and fulvous. 
iii. The body of the Workers is oblong. 
The head triangular. The mandibles are prominent, so as to terminate the head 
in an angle, toothless, and forcipate. The tongue and maville are long and incurved ; 
the labrum and antenne black. 
In the trunk the tegule are black. The wings extend only to the apex of the 
fourth segment of the abdomen. The /egs are all black, with the digits only rather 
piceous. ‘The posterior tibie are naked above, exteriorly longitudinally concave, 
and interiorly longitudinally convex; furnished with lateral and recumbent hairs 
to form the corbicula, and armed at the end with the pecten. ‘The upper surface of 
the posterior plante resembles that of the tibie; underneath they are furnished with 
a scopula ov brush of stiff hairs set in rows: at the base they are armed with stiff 
bristles, and exteriorly with an acute appendage or auricle. 
The abdomen is a little longer than the head and trunk together; oblong, and 
rather heart-shaped: a transverse section of it is triangular. It is covered with 
longish, flavo-pallid hairs: the first segment is short with longer hairs; the base 
of the three intermediate segments is covered, and as it were banded, with pale 
hairs. ‘The apex of the three intermediate ventral segments is rather fulvescent, 
and their base is distinguished on each side by a trapeziform wax pocket covered by 
a a membrane. ‘Lhe sting or rather vagina of the spicula, is straight. 
See p. 275, 
.” In hives where a queen laying male eggs has been killed, the workers con- 
tinue to make only male cells, though supplied with a fertile queen, and “the 
fertile workers lay eges in them, Schirach, 268. 
5 Huber, ii, 426. 
AAG 
