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318 THE INSECT WORLD. 
of which is armed with hooks. The other tools of the working bee 
consist of a pair of movable mandibles, which close the mouth on 
its two sides, and of a trunk or proboscis (Fig. 311), which may 
be considered as a sort of tongue. 
With its mandibles the working bee seizes any hard substance. 
The trunk serves it to collect the juice lying on the surface of 
the petals, or at the bottom of the corolla of the flower. When 
a bee has settled on a full-blown flower, it is seen immediately 
to make for the interior of the corolla, put out its trunk, and 
apply it to the petals; it lengthens it, shortens it, and twists and 
bends it in all directions. When the hairy surface of this 
organ 1s covered with vegetable juice, the bee returns it to its 
mouth, and deposits its booty in a conduit, whence the juice 
passes into its first stomach. This trunk is then, in all re- 
spects, a tongue, with which the bee sucks, licks, and pumps up 
the honey of flowers. But it also gathers the pollen. When 
it enters a flower the bee covers itself with pollen from head to 
foot, and then passing its brushes carefully over its whole body, 
removes the dust which adheres to it in every part, and piles it 
up on the triangular palettes of its hind-legs, in such a manner as 
to form balls of greater or less size. If the flower is not quite full 
blown, the bee makes use of its mandibles to open the anthers, 
in which case the front pair of legs transmit the booty to the 
second pair, which store them in the baskets of the third. 
When it has gathered as much as it can carry, the bee returns 
to the hive, its legs laden with pollen. 

Fig. 312.—Male, or Drone Fig. 313. —Female, or Queen 
(Apis mellijica). (Apis mellifica). 
This complete set of tools which we have just described is only 
to be met with among the working bees. The males or drones 
(Fig. 312), larger and more hairy than the working bees, emitting 



