f• I. NATURAL HISTORY AND ECONOMY OF THE HONEY BEE.—The honey bee is either wild or mesticated, and consists of numerous societies, posed of from 10,000 to 30,000, perhaps 40,000 or 50,000 individuals. In the former state, it inhabits the woods, in clefts of trees, and, it may be, the vities of rocks also : in the latter, it is kept by us wooden boxes, or coverings of straw or osiers, monly called hives in English, but more definitely skips in the Scottish language, or old English : for, strictly speaking, hive signifies the covering and its colony ; and swarm, that portion of the bees which leaves the parent stock at a certain season of the year, before it is lodged under our care. Each hive, by which we understand the whole colony, contains three kinds of bees ; females, males, and workers. The females, of which not more than one can ever live in all the great population of a hive, are called queens; the males, of which there arc hundreds, and sometimes thousands, are called drones; and the remainder are denominated workers, or neuters, from being. supposed to belong to neither sex. They are the operative part of the communi ty ; for, while the female gives birth to the whole young, and the males perform no functions but per petuating their race, the workers collect the honey, form the wax, build the combs, watch over the growth of the young, and supply their necessities.
We shall not dwell on the anatomy of the bee, con- , cerning which Swammerdam and Reaumur have so largely written ; but the use to which the animal can convert some of its organs, requires a brief explana tion of their structure. A bee has four wings and six legs : its abdomen consists of several scaly circu lar rings, connected by membranes ; the last is armed with a sting : and the head is provided with a pro boscis, and two mandibles, in addition to a real mouth, which the animal has likewise. The body is totally covered with hair, which is not to be considered an indifferent character ; , for each separate hair, viewed with the microscope, appears a plant in miniature, with a stem and branches ;. and the small particles of pollen, shaken off by the motion of a bee in a flower, are arrested by the hairs, and then collected into pel lets with its limbs. In the third pair of these limbs is a small hollow, to which the pellets arc fixed ; and part of the second pair is provided with what re semble brushes, for brushing off the pollen. The proboscis is the principal organ employed in collect ing the honey ; when inactive, it is folded under the head, and defended by a scaly sheath, or covering. When employed, it is extended, and the animal ap parently licks the honey from the flower into its mouth, which is of considerable size, and thence transmits it to the stomach. All the honey which we see in combs is a vegetable product. After being swallowed by the bees, it is disgorged into their cells ; but its scanty quantities in the natural state prevent us from ascertaining what change is undergone in the stomach. Until very lately, it was believed that the bees also swallowed the wax, and disgorged it to construct the cells ; and, when so disgorged, that it had the property of indurating, like the substance forming silk, immediately on exposure to the air ; - and that the .mandibles were used in moulding the
parts to their proper size and thickness. It is now proved, that wax is made out of honey, which is swallowed by the bees indeed, but there is great rea son to believe that it then transudes through the membranes connecting the rings of the body in the form of wax. The females and workers have a sting, of which the males are destitute. This is not a simple sharp-pointed weapon, as apparent to the eye of a superficial observer ; it consists of two separate por tions, applied longitudinally against each other. The external side of each is provided with several barbs, like those of a dart, which prevents the retraction of the sting from the wound it has inflicted, until the pur pose of its penetration, the discharge of poison, be fulfilled. These barbs, it is said, may be elevated and depressed at the will of the animal. Having satisfied its vengeance, the sting is withdrawn ; but if the bee is suddenly forced away, the barbs remain elevated, and retain the sting in the wound. The extraordinary pain attending so small a puncture, arises from a liquid, which is genuine poison, flowing into the wound from an oval bag, or reservoir, in the body of the animal, connected with the sting ; and its viru lence is such, as even to occasion death, if the stings be numerous. In experiments where a small portion of the poison was introduced into a slight puncture with the point of a pin, acute pain followed ; and, on laying the smallest quantity on the tongue, a sweet ish taste first was sensible, which became burning and acrid, and continued so several hours. The effect of the poison is various on different people ; in single sting occasions violent swelling and in flammation ; others suffer little inconvenience from it. If the sting be left in the wound, its vital powers will force it still deeper ; therefore it is cautiously to be extracted, and the part sucked and washed with vinegar, or some liquid fit to allay inflammation, that being probably the only effectual mode of cure. We cannot readily ascertain the real use of the sting to bees. It is vain to affirm, that it is an organ of de fence against enemies ; that the treasures of a hive are particularly exposed to depredation, and require great protection. Many other insects, in similar cir cumstances, have no defensive weapon ; many possess it which we can hardly say have any thing to guard ; and some, exposed to numerous accidents, are entire ly unprovided with the means of averting them. The sole purposes to which we see the sting applied, independent of the resistance of injury, are massacring the drones of the hive ; and by queens, to effect tbeir mutual destruction. Queens are more pacific than the common bees, and less inclined to sting the per son that handles them.