ing raises the temperature of the bees' bodies, and this warmth given off to the air, also helps make evaporation more rapid. In addition to bringing in food the workers also bring in, when necessary, "propolis," or the resinous gum of certain trees, which they use in repairing the hive, as closing up cracks and crevices in it.

In many of the cells there will be found, not pollen or honey, but the eggs or the young bees in larval or pupal condition (Fig. 243). The queen moves about through the hive, laying eggs. She deposits only one egg in a cell. In three days the egg hatches,

and the young bee appears as a helpless soft, white, footless grub or larva. It is cared for by certain of the workers, that may be called nurses. These nurses do not differ structurally from the other workers, but they have the special duty of caring for the helpless young bees. They do not go out for pol

FIG. 243. Cells containing eggs, larvæ, and pupa of the honeybee. The lower, large, irregular cells are the queen cells. (After Benton.)

len or honey, but stay in the hive. They are usually the new bees-i. e., the youngest or most recently added workers. After they act as nurses for a week or so they take their places with the food-gathering workers, and other new bees act as nurses. The nurses feed the young or larval bees at first with a highly nutritious food called bee jelly, which the nurses make in their stomach, and regurgitate for the larvæ. After the larvæ are two or three days old they are fed with pollen and honey. Finally, a small mass of food is put into the cell, and the cell is "capped" or covered with wax. Each larva,

after eating all its food, in two or three days more changes into a pupa, which lies quiescent without eating for thirteen days, when it changes into a full-grown bee. The new bee breaks open the cap of the cell with its jaws, and comes out into the hive, ready to take up its share of the work for the community. In a few cases, however, the life history is different. The nurses

will tear down several cells around some single one, and enlarge this inner one into a great irregular vase-shaped cell. When the egg hatches, the grub or larva is fed bee jelly as long as it remains a larva, never being given ordinary pollen and honey at all. This larva finally pupates, and there issues from the pupa not a worker or drone bee, but a new queen bee. The egg from which the queen is produced is the same as the other eggs, but the worker nurses by feeding the larva only the highly nutritious bee jelly make it certain that the new bee shall become a queen instead of a worker. It is also to be noted that the male bees or drones are hatched from eggs that are not fertilized, the queen having it in her power to lay either fertilized or unfertilized eggs. From the fertilized eggs hatch larvæ which develop into queens or workers, depending on the manner of their nourishment; from the unfertilized eggs hatch the males.

When several queens appear there is much excitement in the community. Each community has normally a single one, so that when additional queens appear some rearrangement is necessary. This rearrangement comes about first by fighting among the queens until only one of the new queens is left alive. Then the old or mother queen issues from the hive or tree followed by many of the workers. She and her followers fly away together, finally alighting on some tree branch and massing there in a dense swarm. This is the familiar phenomenon of "swarming." The swarm finally finds a new hollow tree, or in the case of the hive bee the swarm is put into a new hive, where the bees build cells, gather food, produce young, and thus found a new community. This swarming is simply an emigration, which results in the wider distribution and in the increase of the number of the species. It is a peculiar but effective mode of distributing and perpetuating the species.

There are many other interesting and suggestive things which might be told of the life in a bee community: how the community protects itself from the dangers of starvation when food is scarce or winter comes en by killing the useless drones and the immature bees in egg and larval stage; how the instinct of home-finding has been so highly developed that the worker bees go miles away for honey and nectar, flying with unerring accuracy back to the hive; of the extraor

dinarily nice structural modifications which adapt the bee so perfectly for its complex and varied businesses; and of the tireless persistence of the workers until they fall exhausted and dying in the performance of their duties. The community, it is important to note, is a persistent or continuous one. The workers do not live long, the spring broods usually not over two or three months, and the fall broods not more than six or eight months; but new ones are hatching while the old ones are dying, and the community as a whole always persists. The

FIG. 244.-Female (a), male (b) and worker (c) of an ant, Camponotus sp.

queen may live several years, perhaps as many as five.' She lays about one million eggs a year.

There are many species of ants, two thousand or more, and all of them live in communities and show. a truly communal life. There is much variety of habit in the lives of different kinds of ants, and the degree in which the communal or social life is specialized or elaborated varies much. But certain general conditions prevail in the life of all the different kinds of individuals-sexually developed males and females that possess wings, and sexually undeveloped workers that are wingless (Fig. 244). In some kinds the workers show structural differences among themselves, being divided into small workers, large workers, and soldiers. The workers are, as with the

1 A queen bee has been kept alive for fifteen years.

bees, infertile females. Although the life of the ant communities is much less familiar and fully known than that of the bees, it is even more remarkable in its specializations and elaborateness. The ant home, or nest, or formicary, is, with most species, a very elaborate underground, many-storied labyrinth of galleries and chambers. Certain rooms are used for the

FIG. 245.-The ant, Solenopsis fugax: a, Male; b, dealated female; c, worker; d. portion of nest showing broad galleries of the host ant intersected by the tenuous galleries of Solenopsis, the thief ant. (After Wasmann. See account on page 375.)

storage of food; certain others as "nurseries" for the reception and care of the young; and others as "stables" for the ants' cattle, certain plant lice or scale insects which are sometimes collected and cared for by the ants.

The food of ants comprises many kinds of vegetable and animal substances; but the favorite food, or "national dish," as it has been called, is a sweet fluid which is produced by certain small insects, the plant lice (Aphididae) and scale insects (Coccida). These insects live on

the sap of plants; rose bushes are especially favored with their presence. The worker ants (and we rarely see any ants but the wingless workers, the winged males and females appearing out of the nest only at mating time) find these honey-secreting insects. and gently touch or stroke them with their feelers (antenna), when the plant lice allow tiny drops of the honey to issue from the body, which are eagerly drunk by the ants. It is manifestly to the advantage of the ants that the plant lice should thrive; but they are soft-bodied, defenseless insects, and readily fall a prey to the wandering predaceous insects like the ladybirds and aphis lions. So the ants often guard small groups of plant lice, attacking, and driving away the would-be ravagers. When

the branch on which the plant lice are gets withered and dry, the ants have been observed to carry the plant lice carefully to a fresh, green branch. On page 374 is described how the little brown ant Lasius brunneus cares for the corn root plant louse. In the arid lands of New Mexico and Arizona the ants rear their scale insects on the roots of cactus. Other kinds of ants carry plant lice into their nests and provide them with food there. Because the ants ob

tain food from the plant lice and take care of them, the plant lice are not inaptly called the ants' cattle.

Like the honeybees, the young ants are helpless little grubs or larvæ, and are cared for and fed by nurses. The so-called ants' eggs, little white, oval masses, which we often see being carried in the mouths of ants in and out of ants' nests, are not eggs, but are the pupa which are being brought out to enjoy the warmth and light of the sun or being taken back into the nest afterwards.

FIG. 246.-Nest of the ant, Leptothorax emersoni, with the nest of another ant, Myrmica scabrinodes. (See account on page 375.) (After Wheeler.)

In addition to the workers that build the nest and collect food and care for the plant lice, there is in many species of ants a kind of individuals called soldiers. These are wingless, like the workers, and are also, like the workers, not capable of laying or of fertilizing eggs. It is the business of the soldiers, as their name suggests, to fight. They protect the community by attacking and driving away predaceous insects, especially other ants. The ants are among the most warlike of insects. The soldiers of a community of one species of ant often sally forth and attack a community of some other species. If successful in battle the workers of the victorious community take possession of the food stores of the conquered and carry them to their own nest. Indeed, they go even further; they may