330 
BRITISH BEES. 
The structure of the workers, which, enables them 
to carry on all these operations with the requisite faci¬ 
lity, is very different from that of the two sexes we 
have just described. As before said, they are abortive 
females, but, as I shall have occasion to explain lower 
down, capable of having this special incapacity removed, 
if the necessary process requisite to be adopted for the 
purpose be applied within three days of their being 
hatched into the larva state. The acquisition of the 
faculty of fertility entails, however, the loss of all 
power of pursuing any of the other occupations of the 
hive practised exclusively by the workers in general. 
The nurture that gives it them converts them into 
queens, and moulds them to the structure of this sex de¬ 
scribed above. As a remarkable and rare exception, 
some one or other of these workers will occasionally have 
power of laying a few eggs, but wdiich are always those 
of drones. The other peculiarities of their structure are 
its adaptation to the secretion of wax above described; 
and their power of throwing up the honey they have 
collected in the first stomach or honey-bag, before it 
passes on by digestion, somewhat in the way the rumi¬ 
nant quadrupeds bring up the cud, of course by muscular 
action, without the convulsion of vomiting. Their next 
distinction is that their mandibles are edentate and more 
like spoons, and are often so used, or as the plastering- 
trowel of masons is for smoothing surfaces. Their legs 
remarkably differ from those of the other sexes, all of their 
limbs being somewhat adapted to the collection and con¬ 
veyance of pollen and its manipulation, as well as that of 
propolis; but it is the posterior shanks which are spe¬ 
cially constructed for the conveyance of these materials, 
by being framed externally like a little basket; being 
