324 
BRITISH BEES. 
at home, consists in the vertical enlargement of his 
compound eyes, which meet over the brow, and in the 
posterior expansion of the inferior wings, which take a 
broad backward sweep, giving the insect larger powers 
of flight, but perhaps required as much by its own bulki¬ 
ness and weight as for the purpose of ascending above 
his bride in the upper regions of the air; but that its 
weight cannot be the sole reason is testified by the 
analogous structure in the male of the genus Astata , 
one of the fossorial Hymenoptera, where a similar ex¬ 
pansion of the inferior wing is concomitant with a similar 
development of the compound eyes, yet in which the 
abdomen is very small, and this power is therefore evi¬ 
dently given to these merely to increase the velocity or 
the duration of their flight. The rest of the structure of 
these drones disables them, like all other male bees, 
for any labour; and as they must be sustained as long 
as they may be of service, the possibility of which termi¬ 
nates with the last issue of a swarm from the hive, a 
period appreciated by the instinct of tlue workers, they 
are then driven forth, but it is in dispute whether the 
workers destroy them, or whether their destruction is 
effected by exposure and hunger, or by the natural limita¬ 
tion of their lives, for although their tongues are formed 
upon the same type as that of the worker, it is con¬ 
siderably less developed, and appears to be adapted only 
to obtain nutriment from the honey already collected in 
the cells, as they seem even deficient in the instinct to 
gather it for themselves from flowers, never being ob¬ 
served to visit them. 
The last inhabitant of the hive is the worker, or 
abortive female, whose labour has several phases. A 
difference of size amongst them has been supposed to 
