ORDER OF THE HONEY-BEE.
The honey-bee belongs to the order Hexapods, or true Insects. The first term is appropriate, as all have in the imago or last stage, six legs. Nor is the second term less applicable, as the word insect comes from the Latin and means to cut in, and in no other articulates does the ring structure appear 80 marked upon merely a superficial examination. More than this, the true insects when fully developed have, unlike all other articulates, three well-marked divisions of the body ([Fig, 2]), namely: the head ([Fig, 2, a]), which contains the antennæ ([Fig. 2, d]), the horn-like appendages common to all insects; eyes ([Fig. 2, e]) and mouth organs; the thorax ([Fig. 2, b]), which bears the legs ([Fig. 2, g]), and wings, when they are present; and lastly, the abdomen ([Fig. 2, c]), which, though usually memberless, contains the ovipositor, and when present, the sting. Insects, too, undergo a more striking metamorphosis than do most animals. When first hatched they are worm-like and called larvæ ([Fig, 12]), which means masked; afterward they are frequently quiescent, and would hardly be supposed to be animals at all. They are then known as pupæ, or as in case of bees as nymphs ([Fig, 13]). At last there comes forth the imago with compound eyes, antennæ and wings. In some insects the transformations are said to be incomplete, that is the larva, pupa and imago differ little except in size, and that the latter possesses wings. We see in our bugs, lice, locusts and grasshoppers, illustrations of insects with incomplete transformations. In such cases there is a marked resemblance from the egg to the adult.
As will be seen by the above description the spiders, which have only two divisions to their bodies, only simple eyes, no antennæ, eight legs, and no transformations (if we except the partial transformations of the mites), as also the myriapods, which have no marked divisions of the body, and no compound eyes—which are always present in the mature insect—many legs and no transformations, do not belong to the order Insects.