tacks of the queen-mother, as long as there is any prospect of her leading another swarm from the hive; if a new swarm is not to be sent off, the workers allow the approach of the old queen to the royal cells, and she immediately commences the destruction of the royal brood by stinging them, one after the other, while they remain in the cells. Huber observes that the cocoons of the royal larvæ are open behind, and he believes this to be a provision of nature to enable the queen to destroy the young, which, in the ordinary cocoon, would be safe against her sting. When the old queen departs with a swarm, a young one is liberated, who immediately seeks the destruction of her sisters, but is prevented by the guards; if she departs with another swarm, a second queen is liberated, and so on, until further swarming is impossible from the diminution of the numbers or the coldness of the weather; then the reigning queen is allowed to kill all her sisters. If two queens should happen to come out at the same time, they instantly commence a mortal combat, and the survivor is recognized as the sovereign; the other bees favor the battle, form a ring, and excite the combatants, exactly as in a human prize-fight. The male bee, or drone, may be known by the thicker body, more flattened shape, round head, more obtuse abdomen containing the male generative organs, the absence of the sting, and the humming noise of their flight; they produce neither wax nor honey, being idle spectators of the labors of the workers, who support them; they comprise about or of the whole number of a hive in the spring, when they are most numerous; their use is only to impregnate the females, and, secondarily, to supply food to the swallows and carnivorous insects which prey upon them when they take their mid-day flights. When the queens are impregnated, and the swarming has ceased, the workers, in July or August, commence an indiscriminate attack upon the drones, chasing them into the bottom and corners of the hive, killing them with their stings, and casting out the dead bodies; this destruction extends even to the eggs and larvæ of males. If a hive is without a queen, the males are allowed to survive the winter. The working bees, or neuters, are the smallest, with a lengthened proboscis, the basket conformation of the posterior pair of legs, and the apparent absence of generative organs; rudiments of ovaries have recently been discovered on minute dissection, which explain some remarkable facts in the economy of the hive. The workers have been divided by Huber into nurses and wax-workers; the former are the smallest and weakest, ill adapted for carrying burdens, whose business it is to collect the honey, feed and take care of the grubs, complete the cells commenced by the others, and to keep the hive clean; the latter take the charge of provisioning the hive, collecting honey, secreting and preparing wax, constructing the cells, defending the live from attack, attending to the wants of

the queen, and carrying on all the hostilities of the community. The number of the workers is from 5,000 or 10,000 to 50,000, according to the size of the hive; they form about of the whole; they are armed with a sting, and are easily excited to use it. They are sometimes called neuters, as if they were of neither sex; it is now established that the larvæ of the workers and of the females do not differ; that the queens lay only two kinds of eggs, one destined to produce the males, and the other capable of being converted, according to circumstances, into workers or queens; in other words, that the workers are females, in which the generative organs are not developed. Experiments amply prove that on the loss of the queen the hive is thrown into the greatest confusion; the inquietude which commences in one part is speedily communicated to the whole; the bees rush from the hive, and seek the queen in all directions; after some hours all becomes quiet again, and the labors are resumed. If there be no eggs nor brood in the combs, the bees seem to lose their faculties; they cease to labor and to collect food, and the whole community soon dies. But, if there be brood in the combs, the labors continue as follows: having selected a grub, not more than 3 days old, the workers sacrifice 3 contiguous cells that the cell of the grub may be made into a royal cell; they supply it with the peculiar stimulating jelly reserved for the queens, and at the end of the usual 16 days the larva of a worker is metamorphosed into a queen. This fact, which rests on indisputable authority, is certainly a most remarkable natural provision for the preservation of the lives of the colony. While a hive remains without a queen swarming can never take place, however crowded it may be. The possibility of changing the worker into a queen is taken advantage of in the formation of artificial swarms, by which the amount of honey may be indefinitely increased. In a well-proportioned hive, containing 20,000 bees, there would be 19,499 workers, 500 males, and 1 queen.-The food of bees consists principally of two kinds-the honeyed fluids and the pollen of flowers; they also eat honey-dew, treacle, sirup, and any saccharine substance. They lick up honey and fluid substances by their long proboscis from the blossoms of various flowers; the mignonette and clover afford honey of remarkable fragrance and in great abundance. It is inferred that bees have an imperfect sense of taste and smell from their collecting honey indiscriminately from sweet-scented and offensive flowers; it is well known that in some places their honey acquires poisonous qualities from the flowers of different species of laurel, thorn-apple, azalea, and poison-ash; many mysterious cases of sickness have been traced to the consumption of such poisoned honey, and even the bees are sometimes destroyed by the vegetable poisons which they imbibe. During the spring, and until late in the autumn, bees collect the pollen from the anthers of

flowers by means of the hairs on their legs, and, after forming a ball, transport it in their basket to the hive for the food of the young brood; this pollen consists of small capsules which contain the fecundating principle of flowers, and is so abundant that the bees of a single hive will often bring in a pound daily; hence some agriculturists have supposed that the bees diminished the fecundity of plants, by abstracting the pollen, when, on the contrary, they essentially promote it, by transporting the fecundating principle from plant to plant. Insects are among nature's most efficient instruments for the spread of vegetation; by them are produced the greater part of the hybrid varieties of flowers. Honey-dew is a saccharine fluid discharged from the tubes at the extremity of the body in the aphides, or plant-lice; these herd together on plants, and become so gorged with sap that they are obliged to eject the honeyed fluid; this falls on the leaves and dries, forming honey-dew, eagerly sought after by bees and ants; the same name has been given to a sweet exudation of the sap from the leaves of plants in dry weather. Bees require considerable water, but they are not particular about its purity; indeed, the more stagnant and putrid it is the better they seem to like it; it is well known that they are very fond of congregating about public urinals, as if the pungent ammoniacal salts were grateful to them. The food of the queen bee has been subjected to chemical analysis by Dr. Wetherill, of Philadelphia; that of the royal grubs is a kind of acescent jelly, thick and whitish, becoming more transparent and saccharine as the larva increases in size; it has been shown by Huber to consist of a mixture of honey and pollen, modified by the workers; the former appears amorphous under the microscope, is heavier than water, of the consistency of wax, sticky and elastic; it consists of wax, albumen, and protein compounds, and is therefore properly called bee-bread; it contains albuminous compounds, which would probably prove, on analysis, similar to the gluten of wheat. Honey alone is not sufficient for the support of bees; they require nitrogenized substances, like pollen, for the body, as well as honey and non-nitrogenized food. Wax is secreted in pouches or receptacles, in the abdomen of the working bees only, lined with a membrane arranged in folds like a 6-sided network; it accumulates in these until it appears externally in the form of scales between the abdominal rings; these plates are withdrawn by the bee itself, or some of its fellowworkers, and used for building and repairing the cells. The formation of wax is the office of the wax-workers, which may be known from the nurses by the greater size and more cylindrical shape of the abdomen, and larger stomach; the secretion goes on best when the bees are at rest, and accordingly the waxworkers suspend themselves in the interior in an extended cluster or hanging curtain, holding on to each other by the legs; they remain

motionless in this position about 15 hours, when a single bee detaches itself, and commences the construction of a cell, and the others come to its assistance and begin new cells. The quantity of wax secreted depends not at all on the pollen consumed, but on the consumption of honey; when bees are fed on cane sugar they form wax with more difficulty than when they are fed on grape sugar; the former is not so readily decomposed, but may be changed into the latter in the bee's body by the absorption of 2 equivalents of water. According to Liebig, an equivalent of starch is changed into fat by losing 1 equivalent of carbonic acid and 7 equivalents of oxygen; and Dr. Wetherill suggests that wax, which bears a great analogy to fats, may be derived from honey in a similar manner. Wax, composed of cerine and myricine, is represented chemically by C H O2, and, anhydrous grape sugar by C12 H12 O12; so that 3 equivalents of grape sugar would yield 1 equivalent of wax by the loss of 2 equivalents of carbonic acid, 2 of water, and 28 of oxygen.-Bees breathe by means of airtubes, which open externally on the corslet; experiments show that they soon perish in a vacuum or under water, and that a constant renewal of atmospheric air is necessary for their well-being. The condition of a hive, filled with many thousand active and crowded bees, and communicating with the outer air only by a small opening at the bottom, and that usually obstructed by the throng passing in and out, is very unfavorable for the maintenance of a pure air; the black hole of Calcutta is the only human receptacle which can be compared to it; a taper is very soon extinguished in a globe of the dimensions and with the aperture of a bee-hive, and yet these insects, as easily suffocated as any other, get along very well, and their respiration is accompanied by the usual absorption of oxygen and excretion of carbonic acid gas. With all this closeness of the air in the hive, direct examination has proved that it is nearly as pure as atmospheric air; neither the contents of the hive, nor the bees themselves, have any power of evolving oxygen, but the air is renewed through the door of the hive, where an inward current is produced, whenever required, by the rapid agitation of the wings of the bees. Some of the workers are always thus employed in ventilating the hive, which they do by planting themselves near the entrance, both inside and outside, and imitating the action of flying; in this way the impulse which would carry them forward in flight is exerted on the air, producing a powerful backward current; in this manner is explained the humming sound heard in the interior of an active hive, especially in the warmest days. From their active respiration the temperature of a hive is very high, varying from 73° to 84° F., and on some occasions rising to 106°; they are very sensitive to thermometrical changes, the warm sun exciting them to vigorous action, and cold reducing

them to a torpid state. The instincts, and, in the belief of many, the intelligence of the bee, are remarkably displayed in the preparation of the hive, the construction of the cells, and in the phenomena of swarming. The first thing done on entering a new hive is to clean it thoroughly, to stop all crevices, and lay the foundation for the comb. Wax is not the only material used by bees in their architecture; beside this, they employ a reddish-brown, odoriferous, glutinous resin, more tenacious and extensible than wax, called propolis, which they obtain from the buds of the poplar and birch and from various resinous trees. This adheres so strongly to the legs of the bee, that its fellow-laborers are obliged to remove it, which they do with their jaws, applying it immediately to every crevice and projection in the hive, to the interior of the cells, and to the covering of any foreign body too heavy for them to remove; in this way even large snails are hermetically sealed and prevented from imparting a noxious quality to the air. Bees will carry home many artificially prepared glutinous substances in their tarsal baskets. After the workers have secreted a sufficient amount of wax, the construction of the combs commences. These are formed into parallel and vertical layers, each about an inch thick, the distances between the surfaces of each being about half an inch for the passage of the bees. They may extend the whole breadth and height of the hive, consisting of thin partitions, enclosing 6-sided cells, about half an inch deep and a quarter of an inch in diameter. The bottom of each cell has the shape of a flattened pyramid with 3 rhombic sides, like the diamonds on playing cards; this gives the greatest strength and greatest capacity with the least expenditure of material. Maraldi had determined that the 2 angles of the rhomb should be 109° 28′ and 70° 32′ by mathematical calculation, and that by actual measurement they are 110° and 70°. There is nothing in the shape of the antennæ, mandibles, or legs of the bee, which should determine these angles in the cells. The foundation is a solid plate of wax, of a semicircular form, in which a vertical groove is scooped out of the size of a cell, which is strengthened by further additions of wax; on the opposite side two other grooves are formed, one on each side of the plane opposite the first; after the bottom is formed, the walls are raised round the sides. The cells of the first row, by which the comb is attached to the roof of the hive, have 5 sides instead of 6, the roof forming one. The first cell determines the position of all that succeed it; and 2 are not, in ordinary circumstances, begun in different parts of the hive at the same time. The laborers follow each other in quick succession, each one adding a little to the work; when a few rows have been constructed in the central comb, two other foundation walls are begun, one on each side of it, at the distance of of an inch, and parallel to it, and then two others as the former are ad

vanced; the comb is thus enlarged and lengthened, the middle being always the most prominent. If all their foundations were laid at the same time, it would be difficult for them to preserve their parallelism, which is perfect only at the last stage of the building process. Beside the vacancies between the cells, which form the highways of the hive, the combs are pierced with holes, to permit easy communication, and prevent loss of time in going round. The syminetry of the architecture of bees is more observable in their work looked at as a whole, than in its details, as they often build irregularly to adapt the structure to different localities and various unfavorable circumstances; different sized cells are made for the larvæ of workers, males, and queens; those for honey and pollen magazines are twice as large as ordinary cells, and so placed that their mouths are upward, for the easier retention of their contents. These supposed defects are generally the results of calculation, and, when mistakes, are very soon remedied. The cells at first are whitish, soft, and translucent; but they soon become yellow and firmer, and quite dark in an old comb.-When a hive becomes too crowded, or for other reasons as yet not perfectly understood, preparations are made for the emigration of a swarm with a queen; scouts are sent out in advance to select a proper place for the new hive, and the workers are busy in collecting an extra quantity of provisions to be carried with them. When the weather is warm, and after a full stock of eggs has been laid, the old queen, unsuccessful in her attempts to destroy the royal brood, abdicates the throne which the first-born new queen will soon dispute with her. During the preparations, a great buzzing is occasionally heard, which suddenly ceases on the day of departure. When all is ready, the signal is given by the workers, and the queen, with all the departing swarm, rushes to the door, and rises into the air; they follow the queen, alighting with her in a dense cluster, and returning, if she does, to the hive. Cold weather, or even a passing cloud, will arrest the emigration until a warmer or brighter period. After a rest at their first landing-place, the swarm collects into a close phalanx, and flies in a direct line to the selected spot. The deserted hive is busily occupied in hatching out a new queen, which, in her turn, leads out a swarm; two or three will be sent off in a summer from an old hive. After the massacre of the males in July or August, the workers busy themselves in collecting stores for winter use; as the autumn advances, honey becomes scarce, and they are obliged to collect the sweet exudations from leaves, honey-dew, and also the juices of peaches and other sweet fruits, after the skin has been broken by birds, snails, and other insects; when all other resources fail, they do not scruple to attack weaker hives, and despoil them of their honey. The cold of winter reduces them to a torpid state, in which they remain until the warm days of spring. Bees recognize the per

con of their queen; if a new one be given them, they will generally surround her, and suffocate or starve her to death, for it is very remarkable that the workers never attack a queen with their stings; if she be permitted to live 24 hours, she will be received as their sovereign. If a supernumerary queen be introduced, a ring is formed by the workers, and the two queens engage in mortal combat, the survivor having the right to reign. Huber discovered that if the fecundation of the queen be delayed beyond the 21st day of her life, she begins to lay the eggs of males, and produces no others during her life; she lays them indiscriminately in large and small, and even in royal cells; in the latter case, they are treated by the nurses as if they were royal grubs. Reim made the singular discovery of prolific workers, thus explaining the laying of eggs in hives destitute of a queen; but the eggs thus produced are always those of males; this is accounted for by their having passed their grub state in cells contiguous to the royal ones, and from having their generative organs partially developed by devouring portions of the stimulating royal food; how they become impregnated has not been ascertained.-The natural enemies of bees are numerous; among them may be mentioned wasps, hornets, spiders, dragon-flies, toads, lizards, woodpeckers, the beeeater, and most insectivorous birds, rats and mice, ant-eaters, bears, and badgers. They seldom die a natural death; and the average duration of life cannot be more than a year; the whole population would be destroyed by their enemies, each other, and the severity of the weather, were it not for the surprising fecundity of the queen, who will lay, in temperate climates, as many as 60,000 eggs, and in warm regions, 3 times that number; a single impregnation is sufficient to fecundate all the eggs which a queen will lay for at least 2 years, and probably during her life. The most destructive and insidious enemy of the bee is a lepidopterous insect, of the group crambida, the galleria cereana, Fab., commonly called the bee or waxmoth; in its perfect state it is a winged moth, about of an inch long, with an expanse of wings of a little more than an inch; the females are the largest, of a dark gray color, tinged with purple-brown and dark spots; they remain quiet in the daytime, but in the evening, when the bees are at rest, they creep in at the door of the hive and deposit their eggs; when they are prevented from entering, they lay their eggs outside, from which the worm-like caterpillars hatched from them can easily creep in. These small and tender Worms eat their way in all directions through the waxen cells; each one spins a tough silken tube, in which it lies concealed by day, and from which it comes out at night, devouring the wax within its reach; they grow to the size of an inch or more, gnawing the combs to pieces, and filling the hive with their dirty webs, until the bees, discouraged by the ravages of their unseen enemies, are obliged to aban

don their hive with its brood and honey. The only way to secure a hive from these depredators is to destroy the worms and chrysalids at least once a week; the moths may be caught in a mixture of sweetened water and vinegar; the best constructed hives will not supersede the necessity of this constant watchfulness. Bees are subject to a fatal disease, which has been called dysentery, and which appears to be contagious; nothing can be done for it, except by cleanliness and ventilation, and by supplying them with wax. In Wells's "Explorations in Honduras" (New York, 1857), it is stated that there are in Olancho 14 distinct species of honey-bee; these are of small size and mostly stingless. The wild swarms generally establish themselves in the hollow limbs of trees; these are removed to the porches of the houses, and are there suspended by thongs; in this primitive way large amounts of honey and wax are obtained in Central America. The honey is said to be contained in little bags 2 inches long, ranged along the hive in rows, the cells for the young occupying the centre. The HUMble-Bee (bombus terrestris, Latr.) has been sometimes confounded with the male honey-bee in name, though they do not resemble each other. The humble-bees live in societies less numerous than those of the honey-bee, which end in the autumn to recommence in the spring; they make a loud humming noise during flight, whence the Latin bombus, the French bourdon, and the English bumble-bee. They live in subterranean habitations, 50 or 60, and sometimes 300 together; the females are the largest, the males the smallest, and the workers intermediate in size. All perish in the winter, with the exception of a few females, which become the founders of a new colony in the spring; these females are 6 times as large as the workers, and may be seen in early spring prying into every hole and crevice in the earth in search of a suitable place for their nest. This they make at a depth of 1 or 2 feet in the meadows and plains; they make cavities of considerable extent, dome-shaped, more wide than high; the vault is made of earth and moss, and the interior is lined with an inferior kind of wax; the entrance may be either a simple aperture at the lower part, or a tortuous mosscovered path; the bottom is carpeted with leaves on which are placed irregular masses of brown wax, the future cells of the young. The larvæ live in society until they are about to change into nymphs, when each spins a silken cocoon in which the occupant is placed head downward, and from which it comes out in 4 or 5 days during May and June. The females assist in building the cells, and deposit at the first laying eggs both of males and females; but the latter, on coming to maturity, are only onesixth of the size of their mother, and lay only the eggs of males. Several females may live in peace under the same roof; impregnation takes place outside the nest. The honey and wax are of the same origin and nature as those of

the honey-bee. As they do not hibernate, but perish during the winter, the same nest is not occupied for 2 successive years.-The nest of the CARDER-BEE (bombus muscorum, Latr.) is composed of a dome of moss or withered grass placed over a shallow excavation in the ground of about half a foot in diameter; the materials, after being carded by means of the mandibles and fore-legs, are pushed by the first bee backward to a second, which passes it to a third, and so until the nest is reached; they work in long files, the head being turned away from the nest, and toward the material. Their domes are often seen rising 4 or 6 inches above the level of the fields and meadows; the entrance is at the bottom, about a foot long and an inch wide. As in the humble-bees' nest, we find in that of the carder-bee, little of the architectural regularity of the hive of the honey-bee; there are only a few egg-shaped, dark-colored, irregularly disposed cells, arranged generally in a horizontal position, connected by shapeless waxen columns; these cells are not made by the old bees, but by the grubs, who spin them when they are ready to undergo the change into nymphs; from them they are liberated by the gnawing of the old ones; the cocoons are afterward used as store-houses for honey. The true breeding cells are contained in masses of brown wax, the number of eggs varying from 3 to 30, the whole colony seldom exceeding 60; there are 3 sizes, the females being the largest, none of which are exempt from labor; the females, of which several live in one nest, alone survive the winter. The carder-bee is smaller than the humble-bee, but shorter and thicker than the honey-bee; it resembles in color the materials of the nest, having the fore part of the back a dull orange, and the hind part with different shades of gray ish yellow rings.-The LAPIDARY BEE (bombus lapidarius, Latr.), of a general black color with a reddish orange tail, builds its nest in a heap of stones, of bits of moss, neatly arranged in an oval form; they are social in their habits, and collect honey with great industry; the individuals of a nest are more numerous than the carders, and much more vindictive. The solitary bees display as much foresight, ingenuity, and skill in the construction of their nests, as do the social genera; and perhaps in a more remarkable manner, as a single individual begins and finishes every part of the work. There are only two kinds of individuals, males and females; the males are idle, and the females perform all the labor of making the nest and providing food for the young; they have no brush to their hinder feet and no basket structure on the external side of the tarsi.-Different species of megachile, anthophora, and osmia, have been called by Réaumur MASON-BEES, from their constructing their nests with sand, earthy substances, and sometimes wood, stuck together by clay rendered plastic by their saliva; they build in the interstices of brick walls, in crevices in stones, and wherever they can find a

suitable place, often amid the busiest throngs of men. Within a wall of clay, they make from 1 to 6 chambers, each containing a mass of pollen with an egg; the cells are sometimes parallel and perpendicular, at others with various inclinations, and are closed with a paste of earth; they are thimble-shaped, and about an inch long. Many species, not larger than a horse-fly (andrena), have been called miningbees, from their digging in the ground tubular galleries, a little wider than the diameter of their bodies; they are fond of clay-banks, in which their holes, of the size of the stem of a tobacco pipe, are frequently seen; they are 6 or 8 inches deep, smooth, and circular, with a thimble-shaped horizontal chamber, almost at right angles to the entrance, and nearly twice as wide; in this is placed a single grub with its supply of pollen.-There are several British species of solitary bees to which Réaumur has given the name of CARPENTER-BEES, from their working in wood as the mason-bees do in earth; they select posts and the wood-work of houses which have become soft from commencing decay. The violet-colored species (xylocopa violacea, Linn.) makes her nest by gnawing out small pieces of the wood, which she carries to a short distance and drops for future use, returning by a circuitous route as if to conceal its location; the direction of the tunnel is oblique for about an inch, and then perpendicular, in the axis of the wood, for 12 or 15 inches, and an inch in breadth; sometimes 3 or 4 such excavations are made. The tunnel is divided into cells somewhat less than an inch deep, separated from each other by partitions made of the chips and dust cemented together; some other species employ clay for these partitions. At the bottom of the cell is placed an egg, and over it a paste of pollen and honey; in this way are completed 10 or 12 cells, one above the other, and then the principal entrance is closed by a similar sawdust covering. As several weeks are occupied in these labors, and as she is depositing her eggs at considerable intervals, it is evident that the first egg would have become a perfect insect before the last egg had left the grub state; in order to enable the young to escape as they are hatched, each cell has a lateral opening.Among the leaf-cutting and upholstering bees, may be mentioned the poppy-bee (osmia papaveris, Latr.), a European species, of an inch long, of a black color, with reddish gray hairs on the head and back, and the abdomen gray and silky; she excavates a perpendicular hole in the ground, largest at the bottom, which she lines with the petals of the scarlet poppy cut into oval pieces, and adapted with the greatest nicety and smoothness; the hole is about 3 inches deep, and the lining extends externally on the surface; filling it with pollen and honey to the depth of an inch, she deposits an egg, folds down the scarlet tapestry, and fills above it with earth; it is rare to find more than one cell in an excavation. The rose-leaf cutter