BEDWORTH, a t. in Warwickshire, 5 in. n. of Coventry, and 06 nn. n.w. of London. Ribbons and trimmings are made in the town to some extent, and silk-mills, malt-kilns, lime-kilns, brick fields, and collierieS in furnish. mployment to a large number of the inhabitants. B. is a station on the Coventry and Nuneaton way. The pop. in 1871 was 3405, a decrease from that of 1861, which amounted to 3968.
BEE, the common name of a very large family of insects, of the order hymenoptera (q.v.), belonging to the section of that order called aculeata, in which the females are furnished not with an ovipositor, but (usually) with a sting. Bees were all included by Linitteus in the genus apis (Lat. for B.), but are now divided into many genera; and the name anthophila (Gr. flower-loving) or mellefera (Lat. honey-bearing) is given to the family which they constitute. All bees hi a perfect state feed exclusively or chiefly on saccharine juices, particularly the 'nectar or honey of flowers; and the ordinary food of their young, in the larva state, is the pollen of flowers, or a paste, often called bee-bread, composed of pollen and honey. They evidently perform a very important part in the economy of nature, in the fertilization of flowers, which depends upon the contact of particles of the pollen with the stigma; and, as if to secure this object more perfectly, in their search for honey and pollen, they usually—some have perhaps too hastily said always—pass from flower to flower of the same kind, and not to flowers of different kinds indiscriminately. They abound in almost all parts of the world, but particularly in the warmer parts of it. Not fewer than 250 species are known as natives of Britain.
To enable them to reach their liquid food at the bottom of the tubes of flowers, and in the little receptacles in which it is produced, bees have certain parts of the mouth—the met.rithe and labium (see IxsEcTs), or lower jaws and lower lip, with their feelers (pa/pi)—elongated into a sort of proboscis; and the ligula is elongated, sometimes, as in the common hive B., assuming the form of a filament, is capable of extension and retraction, and is folded up when not in use. This is the organ sometimes called the tongue of bees, although the name cannot be regarded as very appropriate, it being a part of the labium or lower lip. The other elongated parts of the mouth serve as a sort of sheath for this organ, then it is folded up. It is not tubular, and employed in
the manner of suction, as was at one time supposed, but is generally more or less hairy, so that the honey adheres to it as it is rolled and moved about, and is conveyed up through the mouth into the honey-bag. sometimes called the first stomach, an appro priate receptacle, in which it apparently undergoes some change—without, however, being subjected to any process analogous to digestion, and is ready to be given forth again by the mouth, according to the habits of those species of bees which are social, as food for the members of the community that remain at home in the nest, or to be stored up in cells for future provision. See HONEY. But the mouth of bees is also adapted for cutting and tearing, and to this purpose their mandibles or upper jaws are especially appropriated. Of these, some of them, as the common humble B. (q.v.), make use to open their way into the tubes of flowers which are so deep and narrow that they cannot otherwise reach the nectar at the bottom. Others make use of their mandibles to cut out portions of leaves, or of the petals of flowers, to form or line their nests; the com mon hive B. uses them in working with wax, in feeding larvte with pollen, in cleaning out cells, in tearing to pieces old combs, in combats, and in all the great variety of purposes for which organs of prehension are required. But it is not by means of any of the organs connected with the mouth that bees collect and carry to their nests the supplies of pollen needful for their young. The feathered hairs with which their bodies are partially clothed. and particularly those with which their legs are furnished, serve for the purpose of collecting the pollen, which adheres to them, and it is brushed into a hollow on the outer surface of the first joint of the tarsus of each of the hinder pair of legs, this joint being therefore very large, compressed, and of a square or tri angular form—a conformation to which similar is found in any other family of insects. It is also worthy of observation, that in tile social species of bees, the males and the queens, which are never to be employed in collecting pollen, do not exhibit this conformation adapted to it, but only the sexually imperfect commonly called neuters or workers.