512 
Saw-flies, Gall-flies, Ichneumons, 
but not with the Vespoid wasps, including the social kinds. The mouth 
in all bees is provided with a well-developed pair of strong mandibles, 
either sharp and toothed for digging in the ground or tunneling in wood, 
or smooth and spoon-like for moulding wax. The 
food of both adults and larva is always flower- 
nectar (made into honey) and pollen (for the very 
young larvae a predigested food, bee-jelly, is 
regurgitated by the nurse workers) and never in¬ 
sects, paralyzed, killed, or chewed, as with the 
wasps. The bee mouth is therefore fitted for the 
lapping or sucking up of nectar, as well as for 
scraping off and crushing pollen. The maxillae 
and labium are more or less intimately joined 
by membranes and chitinous bars and are capable 
of much variety of movement in the way of fold¬ 
ing, retraction, and extension. The antennae are 
elbowed and their terminal, smooth, cylindrical 
segments are provided with numerous sense-pits 
and papillae, special organs of olfactory and tactile 
perception. The compound eyes are large and 
sight is undoubtedly better than in most insects. 
There are only male and female individuals in 
the solitary species, both winged, and the females 
Fig. 717.—Mouth-parts of provided with a sting; in the social species 
a long-tongued bee, An- (bumble- and honey-bees) there are in addition 
greatly extended tongue worker individuals (females of arrested sexual 
(glossa of labium). (After development but with special structural develop- 
Sharp, much enlarged.) me nt) which are also winged and furnished with 
a sting. The eggs are laid in cells in the ground, in plant-stems, in logs 
or posts, or made of wax (hive-bee) or hollowed out of a food-mass of 
pollen (bumblebees), and the hatching larvae find stored up for them a suf¬ 
ficient food-supply for their larval life, or they are brought food constantly 
during this life. These larvae are footless, white, soft-bodied grubs, which 
pupate in their cells. The issuing imagines gnaw their way out of the 
cells. 
Of the short-tongued bees all are solitary or gregarious; of the long- 
tongued most are solitary, but a few, the bumble- and the honey-bee, live in 
communities. I shall give an account of a few of the more interesting or 
more familiar kinds of bees, illustrating the various typical habits of nest¬ 
building as well as the gradually progressive tendency toward that speciali¬ 
zation of life, communism, exemplified in its extreme condition by the hive- 
bee. 
