Photo by B. H. Bentley] [Sheffield.
BUMBLE-BEE ON EVERLASTING-PEA.
Bumble-bees make their nests in the ground, and live in smaller communities than the hive-bee.
The drone, or male bee, is rather larger than the worker, and has a more obtuse body. He may be at once distinguished by his long thirteen-jointed antennæ, or feelers, for the antennæ are shorter and only twelve-jointed in the queen and worker. There are several hundred drones in a hive; but the queen only pairs once in her life, on the wing, and the ceremony is immediately followed by the death of the drone. The drones have no sting, for the sting of the female and worker is really a modified ovipositor, or egg-laying apparatus, analogous to the organ which is so conspicuous in many ichneumons and other insects belonging to the same order as the bees. In the autumn the unfortunate drones are all massacred or else driven forth from the hive by the workers, when they speedily perish. The workers are by far the most numerous of the inhabitants of a bee-hive; there may be many thousands of them, and their number appears to be only limited by the dimensions of the hive itself.
The ancients had observed something of the economy of bees, but many of their ideas on the subject were strangely fantastic. It was perhaps natural to suppose that the leader of the bees was a king rather than a queen; but it was also supposed that a swarm of bees could be obtained by killing an ox and leaving the carcase to rot. This notion appears to have originated in swarms of flies, more or less resembling bees, having been noticed flying round or near putrefying carcases.
Among all the truly social insects—i.e. hive-bees, wasps, ants, and termites, or so-called white ants—we find that the bulk of the community consists of sterile females, and the number of fertile females is very small, even in those cases where more than one female is permitted to live in a nest, as among wasps.
Photo by C. Reid] [Wishaw, N.B.
BEES.