158 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
laterally thrown into about ten irregular ridges, each 
approximately yoVo^^- across, and these would seem, 
from analogy, to enable the insect to produce a note 
inaudible to us. 
Careful microscopic scrutiny of the bodies of 
several queens (although, unfortunately for this pur- 
pose, I had only dried or preserved specimens), leads 
me to the belief that their piping is actually an 
effect of stridulation resembling that of the ant. The 
chitine of the lateral portions of the third and fourth 
abdominal plates has its scale-like character (see D, 
Fig. 22, Vol. I.) greatly changed. It is here hairless, 
and the individual scales are enlarged from 
to about y-^in. in width, and have their surfaces 
abruptly bowed at right angles to the axis of the 
body, so as to give a form which appears to me, 
after examining stridulating organs in other creatures, 
capable of stridulation. To view the nature of these 
parts, very strong and oblique reflected light is neces- 
sary. This position is made the more probable from 
the remarkable incurved character of the edges of 
the plates, which would rub on the file-like part if 
the hypothesis be correct. The position and arrange- 
ment of the apparatus would fully explain, too, the 
muscular tremor observed by many, myself included, 
to accompany piping. Some have described this as 
the movement of bellows held sideways ; others have 
compared it to the working of an accordion. No 
other part of the body, so far as I have been able 
to discover, suggests, by its conformation, that it 
could be employed in stridulating, save the joint of 
the collar (the junction between the pro- and mesa- 
