282 
DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
the farina wanted for making wax. During the summer they find food 
for themselves, and pass their time in lounging from flower to flower, and 
they are not found in the hive during the winter. By an extraordinary 
instinct, they are massacred without pity by the females before this 
period, in order to save the winter stock of honey, until they have 
departed voluntarily to some nook where they may rest until wanted 
in the next spring. These poor things have no weapons of defense. 
Working Bee. — The third class is the working bee. The working 
bee is considerably less than either the queen bee or the drone. It is 
t about half an inch in length, of a blackish brown color, 
covered with closely set hairs all over the body, which aid 
it in carrying the farina it gathers from the flowers ; and 
on the tibia, or forearm, as it were, of the hind leg, is a 
cavity of cup-like form, for the reception of the kneaded 
little ball of pollen. It is the working bee which collects 
honey and pollen, and which forms the cells, cleans out the 
hive, protects the queen, looks after the condition of the young brood, 
destroys or expels the drones, when these are no longer necessary to 
the well-being of the community ; who, in short, performs all the offices 
connected with the hive and its contents, save only those which have 
reference to the reproduction of the species. The working bees are of 
no sex, and are furnished with a horny and hollow sting, through which 
poison is ejected into the wound it makes; this poison is of an acrid 
character, and of great power in its effects, proving fatal to any insect, 
and instances are on record of its proving so to horses and cattle, nay, 
even to human beings : when human beings, however, are stung (an 
accident that will happen very seldom, if they use the precautions in 
manipulating with their bees, that shall be detailed in the course of this 
volume), they can instantaneously obtain relief by pressing upon the 
point stung with the tube of a key ; this will extract the sting and re- 
lieve the pain, and the application of common spirits of hartshorn will 
instantaneously remove it; the poison being of an acid nature, and being 
thus at once neutralized by the application of this penetrating and vola- 
tile alkali. 
WONDERFUL INSTINCTS AND CONTRIVANCES OF BEES.— The contriv- 
ances of bees in the construction of their combs are amongst the most 
wonderful works of God, as regards insect creation. “ The form of the 
comb is in every country the same, the proportions accurately alike, the 
size the same, to the fraction of a line — go where you will, and the 
form is proved to be that which the most refined analysis has enabled 
mathematicians to discover, as of all others the best adapted for the 
purpose of saving room, work, and materials. This discovery was only 
made about a century ago; nay, the instrument that enabled us to find 
it out was unknown for half a century before that application of its 
powers. And yet the bee has been for thousands of years, in all coun- 
tries, unerringly working according to a fixed rule, which no one had 
discovered until the eighteenth century.” 
We may instance among other surprising illustrations of the ingenu- 
ity of these wonderful creatures, that they lay the foundations of their 
cities at the top of the hive, and build downward. They have straight 
