Fig. 330.—Hives under the shade of trees.

Fig. 331.—Bellows used to stupefy Bees.

We possess in Europe two species or races of bees—the Common Bee (Apis mellifica), and the Ligurian Bee (Apis ligustica), whose abdomen is tawny, with the rings bordered with black. It is this latter species of which Virgil sang, and which is found in Italy and Greece. It has been remarked that the Ligurian bee pierces the calices, at their bases, of those flowers which are too long for it to penetrate into easily, and thus gets possession of the honey, whilst the common bees pass these flowers over. This observation proves that the former is the more intelligent of the two races. In Egypt a bee is reared called the Banded Bee (Apis fasciata).

Ten or twelve other species of honey-bees exist in Senegal, the Cape of Good Hope, Madagascar, East Indies at Timor (Apis Peronii), &c. The European bee has been acclimatised in America, but it soon returns to its wild state, as indeed do all our domestic animals when transported to the other hemisphere. At the Cape of Good Hope the Hottentots seek greedily after the nests of wild bees, a bird called the Indicator guiding them in this chase. This bird is observed flitting about from tree to tree, making a little significant cry. They have only then to follow this bird-informer, for it will not be long in stopping before some hollow tree which contains a nest of bees. The Hottentots always acknowledge its services by leaving it a part of the booty.

Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, tells us, in his work entitled "The Prairie," how the bee-hunters in America discover the wild hives. They place on a plank, covered with white paint still moist, a piece of bread covered with sugar or honey. The bees, in plundering this bread, get some of the paint on their bodies, and are then more easily tracked when they return to their hives. In North America they are, as it were, the harbingers of civilisation. When the Indians perceive a swarm trying to establish themselves in the solitudes of their forests, they say to one another, "The white man is approaching; he will soon be here." True pioneers of civilisation, these insects seem to announce to the forests and deserts of the New World that the reign of Nature has passed away, and that now the social state has begun to play its part—a part that will never end.

Fig. 332.
A species of Melipona.