THE APIS MELLIFIC A. 
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inside old trunks of trees. They make their hive, and their society 
consists of a crowd of workers and a single female or queen. Cell 
making goes on, the queen lays, and larvae are born, and a new 
generation is thus produced ; and thus some hundreds of males 
may be counted in a hive at one particular period of the year, 
besides the queen and the workers. 
These three kinds of individuals present striking differences. 
The fertile females and workers of wasps and humble bees are 
very much alike ; the fertile females are only slightly larger than 
the others — but were they not workers at one period of their 
existence ? The queen bee is incapable of working ; the workers 
or neuters are smaller than she is, and are not so large as the 
Female. Worker. Male. 
DOMESTIC bees ( A pis nullified ). 
drones or males, and it is not necessary to describe them, for they 
are well known to every one. 
The production of wax is one of the most remarkable physio- 
logical phenomena of the organisation of these Hymenoptera. It 
was generally thought, formerly, that the bees disgorged their wax 
from the mouth, and Reaumur certainly held this opinion ; but 
John Hunter discovered the manner in which the wax was formed; 
and it is now evident that the bees carry within themselves this 
important building material. The segments of the abdomen of 
bees overlap from before backwards, but when the margin of one is 
lifted up, two broad and smooth surfaces will be noticed on the 
uncovered surface of the next wing ; these surfaces maintain during 
one part of the year two thin, white, and almost transparent 
laminae, which are really composed of wax. The wax is really 
secreted by some small glands which are within the abdomen, and 
it transudes through the soft and smooth integument between the 
rings or segments. It would appear that the sugary matters which 
