ON BEES' TONGUES, AND HOW THEY SUCK HONEY
In order to understand how a bee sucks honey it will be necessary to go into some rather careful details as to the construction of its tongue and mouth organs. These I will make as short and simple as I can, but the apparatus is a very complicated one, and it will be impossible to describe it without a good deal of technical phraseology.
The tongue has always been considered such an important feature in a bee's structure that it has been made the chief basis of their classification. On this subject I will only say that there are three principal types of tongues—a short bifid tongue (fig. 19, 3[[1]]), resembling those of the fossors; a short pointed one, shaped somewhat like a spear head (fig. 19, 2, 2a); and a long parallel-sided, ribbon-like tongue (fig. 19, 1, 1a). The bees are classified on what is considered to be an
ascending scale, beginning with the bifid-tongued species, through those with the short spear shaped tongues to the higher forms, which have this organ elongate and parallel-sided.
The tongue is the central organ of an elaborate combination of mouth parts, which I will now try to explain. If we turn a bee's head over and look at its underside we shall find a deep cavity, filled up with the base of this combination which fits into it. If we extend the tongue (a humble bee is a good subject on account of its large size, fig. 20) so as to draw its base out of the cavity, we shall find that in the edge of each side of the cavity there is articulated a short rod (20, A), more or less dilated at its apex, called