FOREIGN GENERA OF BFES. 
107 
hollowed within, rather like a spoon, which structure 
would of course imply a difference of economy. 
A further characteristic of these genera, and in which 
they participate with Apis, is the deficiency of spurs to 
the posterior tibiae, which separates them from all other 
genera of bees, as also from Bombus, which has two, yet 
with which, in point of their economy, they more closely 
assimilate than with Apis. They are the South Ameri¬ 
can and Australian indigenous representatives of the 
genus Apis, and are found likewise in Java and Sumatra, 
and in some of the larger and extreme islands of the 
Indian Archipelago, thus also similarly in countries 
where marsupial animals occur. Like Apis, they are 
social in their habits; but their neuters only are as yet 
known, neither males nor females having been described. 
They are reputed to be stingless, and to make honey 
and wax in enormous quantities. The combs in Melli- 
pona are attached either to the branches of trees or are 
suspended from them, but how they are enveloped for 
security is not reported, but sometimes, like Apis, they 
construct them within hollow trees and in the cavities 
of rocks, as in Trigona, in like manner as Apis does in 
its natural state. Their communities are not so large 
as those of the hive bee, and the cells of their combs are 
less perfectly hexagonal, the wax being expended upon 
them in denser quantities, whereas the hive bee is ex¬ 
ceedingly parsimonious in the use of this material, a cir¬ 
cumstance arising possibly from the different and more 
difficult mode the latter have of obtaining it. In the 
latter it is a secretion; but these exotic genera possibly 
collect their wax ready-made by the exudation of plants, 
and, thus, having more readily obtained it, they are more 
lavish in its use. 
