Apis mellifera

“ Like Apis, they are social in their habits; but their neuters only are as yet known, neither males nor females having been described. They are reputed to be stingless, and to make honey and wax in enormous quantities. The combs in Mellipona are attached either to the branches of trees or are suspended from them, but how they are enveloped for security is not reported, but sometimes, like Apis, they construct them within hollow trees and in the cavities of rocks, as in Trigona, in like manner as Apis does in its natural state. ”

“ But the most numerous and interesting of the clay artificers are the workers of a species of social bee, the Melipona fasciculata. The Meliponæ in tropical America take the place of the true Apides, to which the European hive-bee belongs, and which are here unknown; they are generally much smaller insects than the hive-bees and have no sting. The M. fasciculata is about a third shorter than the Apis mellifica: its colonies are composed of an immense number of individuals ”

“ But the foreign genera which will be most interesting to the reader will, I expect, be those of Trigona and Mellipona, which, in many peculiarities, seem abortive Apes. They seem nature’s first endeavour to construct Apis, for they have an apparently imperfect neuration of the wing, in which the external submarginal cell is unfinished. Their only separating distinction from each other is the difference in their mandibles, which in Mellipona are broad and edentate, whereas in Trigona they are also broad but denticulated. ”

“ They are no doubt of the genus Apis, of the division melipones. It has been erroneously affirmed that these bees, which are peculiar to the New World, are destitute of all offensive weapons. Their sting is indeed comparatively feeble, and they use it seldom; but a person, not fully convinced of the harmlessness of these angelitos, can scarcely divest himself of a sensation of fear. ”

“ There is some doubt as to the number of species of this genus, it is certain that the Apis Ligustica of Spinola, or - 40 - Italian bee, the Apis fascial a of Latreille, or Egyptian bee, are only varieties of the Apis mellifica, which also includes the German or black bee.
Mr. F. Smith, an able entomologist, considers Apis dorsata of India and the East Indies, Apis zonata of the same islands, Apis Indica of India and China, and Apis florea of India, Ceylon, China and Borneo, as distinct species. ”

“ Though similar in its habits, the hive-bee of Palestine is a different species to our own. "We never," he says, "found Apis mellifica, L., our domestic species, in the country, though it very possibly occurs in the north; but the common Holy Land insect, Apis ligustica, is amazingly - 210 - abundant; both in hives, in rocks, and in old hollow, trees. It is smaller [?] than our bees, with brighter yellow, bands: on the thorax and abdomen, which, is rather wasp-like in shape, and with very long antennæ. ”

“ With Apis, the genus of the hive-bee, we come to the most highly-specialized members of the family—better known, perhaps than any other insects, on account of the long domestication of many of the species or races. In Apis the workers differ structurally from the queen, who neither builds cells, gathers food, nor tends brood, and is therefore without the special organs adapted for those functions which are possessed in perfection by the workers. ”

“ In Borneo combs are placed in a somewhat similar manner, perhaps formed by the same species. The only bee I have seen domesticated in the East is one at Malacca, the natives hang up bamboos and hollow logs for it, but it is, I believe, not a true Apis, as it makes clusters of large oval shells of black wax.”
I may add that the Timor bee was named Apis testacea on account of its color, which is 53 very light, and is, in fact, the only point in which it differs from Apis dorsata. ”

“ The life-history of Apis mellifica and its anatomy and physiology have been discussed in a whole library of works, and we need only notice the chief features. When a swarm of bees leaves a hive it consists of the queen-bee or female, and a number of workers, these latter being, in fact, the surplus population that has been produced in the hive. The swarm is not a nuptial flight, as is often supposed, but an act of emigration. ”

“ We may be the more excused for this preference when we weigh the interest of the genus Apis to man. The wasp boots us nothing, but is the pilferer of our fruits, and a marauder upon the hive, whose inhabitants it destroys and consumes their produce, it being indifferent to them which they obtain—the bee or the honey,—either furnishing them with sustenance. ”

“ In America, where Apis mellifica is of European introduction, swarms of this bee, escaping domestication, resume their natural condition, and have pressed forward far into the uncleared wild; and widely in advance of the conquering colonist, they have taken their abode in the primitive, unreclaimed forest. ”

“ But of all the animals, the ox kind received the highest honors. Bulls were occasionally sacrificed, but cows never. They were sacred to Isis, the Moon Goddess. There were special individuals of the species, however, who were looked upon with the utmost veneration. They were called Apis and Mnevis. Apis was a black bull, but had a white star on his forehead, the figure of an eagle on his back, a crescent on his right side, with a knot under his tongue, resembling the Scarabeus or sacred beetle. Apis is described as living twenty-five years, when he jumped into a well or into the river Nile. ”

“ Besides the Apis Mellifica, or common domestic bee of Europe, and the genera Bombus and Apathus, or humble-bees in their several species, there are numerous other kinds of the social Apidæ to be met with in different and distant regions of the earth, of which some notice may be acceptable to our readers. ”

“ There are, it is said, no fewer than twenty-seven genera, and one hundred and seventy-seven species of bees, natives of Great Britain. But one only of all these, the Apis millifica, or common honey-bee, has been domesticated. Attempts have been made with others, especially with the bombus, or humble-bee, but without any adequate success. ”

“ Wallace says there is, in the male dorsata, then we may call them different species. The Italian certainly has a longer tongue than the German, yet that is not sufficient to separate them as species. Apis zonata and Apis unicolor, both of the East Indies are said to be very black. Apis dorsata is large, suspends its combs to the branches of trees—in rare cases our own bees have been known to do the same—is said to be cross, to have a very long tongue, to be larger than our common bee, and to make larger cells. ”

“ In both these genera the possibility of reproduction is not restricted to a single female in the nest, but is shared by a number of females. In the genus Apis alone is the division of labour complete, so that only a single female (the queen) is at any one time capable of reproduction, a power which differentiates it from the sterile workers. ”

“ As male and female conjunctively make up the species, thus do the queen-bee and the neuters collectively make up one sex,—the mother,—for the functions performed by the female alone in the case of the solitary kinds of bees are, in the genus Apis, separately executed. The cares and labours of maternity devolve upon these neuters, while the queen-bee’s maternal function is limited to merely laying the eggs with which she is replete, with the instinctive power of selecting for them their proper depository,—each of which is adapted in size to that of the sex which will be produced. ”

“ Several different kinds of honey and wax have been described, but some degree of uncertainty exists as to whether they are all the produce of genuine species of the genus Apis; for it will be found, in a rapid notice I purpose giving of the more conspicuous genera of foreign bees, that there are two exotic genera of this section of the family, both social in their habits, and which both produce the same materials; there is a wasp also that makes honey. ”

“ No wingless adult forms; in some cases societies are formed, and then barren females called workers exist in great numbers, and carry on the industrial operations of the community. Food always derived from the vegetable kingdom, or from other Bees.
There are about 150 genera and 1500 species of bees at present known. Some call the division Mellifera instead of Anthophila. The term Apidae is used by some authorities to denote all the bees, while others limit this term to one of the families {11}or sub-divisions. ”

“ The interior of the abode of these bees is quite dark, only a very small orifice being left, and in this a sentinel is constantly on the alert. The same writer states that Trigona crassipes has the very peculiar habit of always locating its brood-comb in the nest of a species of Termes.
The honey-bee, Apis mellifica (Fig. 6) , is considered the highest form attained by the Anthophilous division of the Hymenoptera. The differentiation of the three forms, male, female, and worker, is here carried to a greater degree of perfection than in the other bees. ”

“ Seven or eight other species of Apis are known, all but one of which occur in Asia, extending as far as Timor and Celebes. The exceptional one, A. adansonii, occurs in tropical Africa and in Madagascar. Gerstaecker thought these species might be reduced to four, but Smith's statement that the males and even the workers show good distinctive characters seems to be correct. Very little is known as to the honey-bees of China and Japan.
The queen-bee greatly resembles the worker, but has the hind body more elongated ”

“ Another genus of stingless bees, the genus Trigona, have the wings longer than the abdomens, and their jaws toothed. These, unlike the Melipona, are not confined to the New World, but are met in Africa, India and Australasia. These build their combs in tall trees, fastening them to the branches much as does the Apis dorsata, soon to be mentioned.
Of course insects of the genus Bombus—our common bumble-bees—belong to this family. Here the tongue is very - 36 - long, the bee large, the sting curved, with the barbs very short and few. Only the queen survives the winter. ”

“ The importance of the antennæ may be inferred from their very complicated structure. Mr. Kirby has observed, that in one species of Apis which he examined, under a powerful magnifier, the ten last joints of the antennæ appeared to be composed of innumerable hexagons, and from this similarity in their structure to the eyes (Vide Senses of Bees) he thought that they might serve a somewhat analogous purpose. ”

“ APIS (Ἄπις) , the Bull of Memphis, which enjoyed the highest honours as a god among the Egyptians. (Pomp. Mela, i. 9; Aelian, Hist. An. xi. 10; Lucian, de Sacrif. 15.) He is called the greatest of gods, and the god of all nations, while others regard him more in the light of a symbol of some great divinity; for some authorities state, that Apis was the bull sacred to the moon, as Mnevis was the one sacred to the sun. ”

“ They are minute, stingless bees, which store up honey and live in colonies often of immense extent. The cells of Melipona are hexagonal, nearly approaching in regularity those of the Hive bee, while the honey cells are irregular, being much larger cavities, which hold about one-half as much honey as a cell of the Humble bee. "Gardner, in his travels, states that many species of Melipona build in the hollow trunks of trees, others in banks; some suspend their nests from the branches of trees, whilst one species constructs its nest of clay, it being of large size." ”

“ White makes the following interesting observations:—"Azara, in the account of his residence in various parts of South America, mentions the fact of several wasps of these countries collecting honey. The Baron Walchenaer, who edited the French translation of this work, published in 1809, thought that the Spanish traveller, who was unskilled in entomology, had made some mistake with regard to the insects, and regarded the so-called wasps as belonging to some bee of the genus of which Apis amalthea is the type (Melipona) . ”

“ At the immediate base of the tongue, and attached to it laterally, rather than to the apex of the labium, are the paraglossæ, or lingual appendages, which are membranous and acute, except in the Andrenidæ, where, in some, their apex is lacerated and fringed with short hairs. These organs are always present in the Andrenidæ and generally in the Apidæ, where they usually obtain extensive relative development; but in the artisan bees they are all but obsolete, and in Ceratina, Cælioxys, Apathus, and Apis, they are not even apparent. ”

“ Ruth’s eyes were big with questions. Miss Apis saw and continued:
“They did this by moving their wings rapidly as if they were flying, and when many did it at the same time the good air was driven around the hive and the bad air out. Then, of course, there had to be sentinels to speak to every bee who passed in, and make sure she had the right to enter, for human people are not our only robbers. There are flies that look much like us, but ask them to show their pollen baskets, and they can’t do it. ”

“ An insect recently hatched appears in this respect a different species from the same when it has been long exposed to wind and weather. Thus, for instance, Apis Muscorum, which, when fresh from the pupa, is distinguished by a thorax covered with hair of a fine orange colour, and by an abdomen whose coat is a rich yellow; when it grows old, especially the male, exchanges these brilliant colours for a cinereous hue, which circumstance misled Fabricius to give it as a distinct species, under the name of A. Senilis. ”