521 
Wasps, Bees, and Ants 
A community of the hive-bee, which may live, of course, not in a hive at 
all, but in a hollow tree, as undoubtedly was the habit of the species in wild 
state (the “bee-trees” of America, however, are inhabited by bee colonies 
which have swarmed away from domesticated ones and are only wild by 
virtue of escaping from the slave-yards of their human 
masters), consists normally of about 10,000 (winter) to 
50,000 (summer) individuals, of which one is a fertile fe¬ 
male, the queen; a few 
score 
to several hundred are 
Fig. 726. Fig. 727. 
Fig. 726.—The honey-bee, Apis mellijica. A, queen; B, drone; C, worker. (Natural 
size.) 
Fig. 727.—Hind leg of worker honey-bee, Apis mellifica, showing pollen-basket. (Much 
enlarged.) 
males, the drones; and the rest are infertile females, the workers. These 
three kinds of individuals are readily distinguishable by structural charac- 
Fig. 728.—Ovaries of queen (A) and worker ( B ) honey-bee, Apis melli-fica. et, egg- 
tubes; sp , spermatheca; pg, poison-gland; ps, poison-sac. (After Leuckart; much 
enlarged.) 
ters. The queen (Fig. 726) has a slender abdomen one-half longer than that 
of a worker, she has no wax-plates on the under side of the abdominal seg- 
