Mr. Hunter's Observations on Bees. 175 
busy abroad ; and, indeed, the idea of any other is ridiculous, 
when we consider the disproportion in numbers, as well as the 
employment of the others, while the working bee has nothing 
to take off its attention to the business of the family. They 
are smaller than either the queen or the males : not all of 
equal size, although the difference is not very great. 
The queen and the working bees are so much alike, that the 
latter would seem to be females on a different scale : however, 
this difference is not so observable in the beginning of winter 
as in the spring, when the queen is full of eggs. They are all 
females in construction, having the female parts, which are 
extremely small, and would be easily overlooked by a person 
not very well acquainted with the parts in the queen : this 
has been observed by Mr. Riem ; indeed, one might suppose 
that they were only young queens, and that they became 
queens after a certain age ; but this is not the case. They all 
have stings, which is another thing that makes them similar to 
the queen. From their being furnished with an instrument of 
defence and offence, they are endowed with such powers of 
mind as to use it, their minds being extremely irritable; so 
much so, that they make an attack when not meddled with, 
simply upon suspicion, and when they do attack, they always 
sting ; and yet, from the circumstance of their not being able to 
disengage the sting, one should suppose they would be more 
cautious in striking with it. When they attack one another, 
they seldom use it, only their pincers : yet I saw two bees en- 
gaged, and one stung the other in the mouth, or thereabouts, 
and the sting was drawn from the body to which it belonged, 
and the one who was stung ran very quickly about with it ; but 
I could not catch that bee, to observe how the sting was situated. 
