The Colony and its Organization 37 
as reliable as those obtained by the experimenter on other 
species in the course of a relatively brief investigation. A 
new worker in bee behavior should hesitate before denying 
the belief of the beekeeper until he is sure of his ground. 
Zoological position of the honeybee. 
The honeybee belongs to the order of insects known as 
Hymenoptera, to which belong also many parasites of other 
insects, the solitary and social wasps, ants and the entire 
group of bees, from the solitary species through various 
stages in the development of the bee colony to the honeybee. 
The honeybee is the highest of these colonial forms, highest 
because most specialized in its behavior and least able to 
exist alone. Yet, while it is highly specialized in its behavior, 
it is not so strikingly modified in its structure as are some of 
the other Hymenoptera, such as the Ichneumonidse. Among 
the Hymenoptera there are three groups of social insects, 
wasps, ants and bees, and the type of colony found in these 
three groups is fundamentally the same. The only other 
true colonial insects are the termites, “white ants,” of a 
distinct order and with a quite different type of colony. 
The genus Apis to which the honeybee belongs also in¬ 
cludes the species indica, florea, dorsata and zonata, all of 
which are natives of the far East and none of which is as 
useful to man as the species mellifica. 1 These are brief!}’' 
discussed in Chapter IX. 
1 One of the cases of confusion originating from the application of the 
law of priority in scientific nomenclature is the attempted change of the 
name of the honeybee from mellifica , by which it has been known for so 
many years, to mellifera. In the 10th edition of Linnaeus’ “Systema 
Naturae” (1758), the boundary of the prehistoric for the taxonomist, the 
name mellifera was used, while Linnaeus himself used mellifica in later 
years. The name mcllifiica is found in a vast literature, it is the scientific 
name by which the bee is known to most zoologists and beekeepers, the 
name which Linnaeus preferred and, last but not least, it is a correctly 
descriptive name. It should be recognized in taxonomy, as well as in 
civic legislation, that a law to be effective must be backed by public senti¬ 
ment. It might therefore with propriety be suggested to the taxonomic 
purists that they cultivate public sentiment by allowing the zoologist, 
dealing in things not names of things, to live in peace among his old friends. 
