Bees, stingless 
nr 
naturalists have studied them with a view 
to the proper classification and arrange¬ 
ment by species. 
There is an equal variation in the num¬ 
ber of bees per colony, for some consist 
of only a few (100) individuals while 
others are supposed to contain not less 
than 100,000 bees. 
and Roster, in his Travels in Brazil, care¬ 
fully mentions them. Spanish writers on 
Central America casually noticed them in 
the 16th century; but no European seems 
to have been interested enough in them to 
make a comprehensive study of their life 
history and habits. The work was left for 
the twentieth-century naturalists. Geoffrey 
Stintless Worker 
Italian Worker 
Magnified two times. 
Italian Queen 
Some build only small nests, not much 
larger than an orange; others construct a 
home as large as an ordinary flour-barrel. 
Some build in a hole in the ground; others 
in the open air, as wasps and hornets do, 
while quite a number build their nests in 
the hollows of forest trees. 
Italian Queen Stingless Queen 
Magnified two times. 
Early travelers in South and Central 
America did not fail to notice the stingless 
bees, and quite frequently referred to 
them. Capt. Basil Hall, in the 18tli 
century, noticed apiaries of them in Peru; 
St. Hilaire, a naturalist-explorer, did some¬ 
thing to awaken interest by his now classi¬ 
cal observations on honey-gathering wasps 
of Paraguay, of which he furnished a com¬ 
plete account in 1825 (Paris). Azara, a 
similar explorer, also called attention to 
them in his travel thru Paraguay. He de¬ 
scribes a species twice as large as Apis 
mellifica. 
Other explorers have mentioned them 
from time to time, but nothing of real 
value was elicited until lately. Their study 
has now been taken up in earnest. White 
men have been inclined to dismiss them as 
worthless for practical purposes; but the 
natives of South America are certainly not 
of that opinion. On the contrary, they re¬ 
gard them as superior to the “stinging 
fly” of the white man. In Southern Mex¬ 
ico, Central America, and South America, 
they are quite frequently kept in a domes¬ 
ticated state by the native inhabitants— 
that is to say, they have them in hollow 
logs which have been brought from the 
forests. These “hives” are generally hung¬ 
up by ropes around their dwellings to pro¬ 
tect the bees from their chief enemy, the 
lizard. The logs are robbed at stated in¬ 
tervals, the keeper being well satisfied if 
he can secure a gallon of honey per hive 
