APIS. 
325 
have been noticed by observers as varying with their 
occupation and duties, but as they are all constructed 
in the same manner, with precisely the same organs, 
which are of the same form and in the same situation, 
this must be a mere imaginative surmise. Their simi¬ 
larity of structure permits them, collectively, to apply 
themselves to the same occupations which the needs of 
the community may at any moment demand. Taking 
them separately with their distinctive occupations at any 
given time, without implying by it a permanent separa¬ 
tion of classes, we find them to consist of wax secreters, 
builders or ccll-sculpturers, honey collectors, pollen col¬ 
lectors, propolis collectors, nurses of the young, venti¬ 
lators, undertakers to carry off the dead, who are perhaps 
also the scavengers which cleanse away any occasional 
dirt, sentinels to guard the hive outside and inside, and 
attendants upon the queen, or as the Times ; Bee 
Master ” very aptly designates them “ ladies in waiting,” 
and at all times many slumberers are reposing from 
their toils. That all these duties are transferable, and 
consequently are transferred indifferently from one to 
the other, is implied by their general capacity for ful¬ 
filling them resulting from this identity of structure, 
which will be understood as not at all infringed by the 
separate capacities I unfold as devolving from their 
temporarily limited functions, all being simultaneously 
in action, but distributed amongst the several indi¬ 
viduals. 
The first important occupation of the worker is the 
secretion of wax for the structure of the cells, and, to 
effect this, honey must be collected, for it is solely from 
the digestion of honey that the wax is produced. This 
in due course passes from the first stomach or honey- 
