GENERAL HISTORY OF BEES. 
47 
are used in the manipulations within the hive. Neither 
the queen bee nor the drone have this structure, and in 
the humble-bee and scopuliped beds the same joint is 
uniformly covered with this brush without its being se¬ 
parated into lines. 
The Abdomen of bees has many shapes, its form be¬ 
ing elliptical, cylindrical, subcylindrical, clavate, coni¬ 
cal or subconical, and sometimes semicircular, or con¬ 
cavo-convex. It consists of six imbricated plates, called 
segments, in the female, and of seven in the male; 
in the latter sex, in several genera, it takes beneath at 
its base and at its apex, as well as at the extremity of 
the latter, remarkable forms and armature. It is very 
variously clothed and coloured, and sometimes extremely 
gaily and elegantly so; these various markings often giv¬ 
ing the insects their specific characteristics; the clothing 
of the under side of this segment of the body, likewise, 
furnishes subsidiary generic characters, especially in the 
artisan bees, in whom it takes the place of the pos¬ 
terior legs as a polliniferous organ. This is possibly 
because were the supply conveyed upon their poste¬ 
rior legs it would be rubbed away as they entered the 
narrow apertures of their nests. Nature does nothing in 
vain, and there is evidently a purpose in this arrangement. 
If we can trace peculiarities of structure to efficient 
reasons, differences of form may be rationally concluded 
as having their cause too, even if it elude our explana¬ 
tory research. Although the reason of peculiar structure 
is not always obvious, it must exist, though undetected; 
as, for instance, why in some bees, as in Megachile, 
Osmia, Chelostoma, Anthidium , etc., the under side of the 
abdomen should be furnished densely with hairs to carry 
their provision of pollen home to their nest, when in other 
