Chapter VIII

A NEW ARRANGEMENT OF BRITISH BEES, WITH ITS RATIONALE, AND AN
INTRODUCTION TO THE FAMILY, SUBFAMILIES, SECTIONS, AND SUBSECTIONS.

IF perfection of instinct, and an organization exquisitely moulded to a complete adaptation to the many delicate and varied functions of that instinct, as well as to the exercise of every faculty incidental to the class, be certainly a proof of pre-eminence, we may justly claim this position for the Order Hymenoptera. There is no characteristic in which they are deficient, nor any in which some of the members of the Order do not transcend in aptitude the insects of all the others.

If they have not been placed at the head of the class Insecta, it has been because systematic convenience did not permit the transposition, on account of the interruption it would have caused to the convenient linking of the rest in a consecutive arrangement. Yet are they the most volatile fliers, the most agile runners, the most skilful burrowers, and consummate architects.

The beauty resulting from the combinations of symmetry of form, elegance of motion, brilliancy of colour, and vivacity of expression, is to be found exclusively amongst them. Either in the velocity of their flight, or in its playful evolutions and graceful undulations, they are unsurpassed, and they hover in the execution of their designs with pertinacious perseverance. No insect structure can more thoroughly exemplify the most appropriate adaptation to its uses, and the most admirable elegance in the formation of the means of execution.

I thus claim for them, and which I think I may without infraction of dispute, the distinctive rank amongst insects.

Having fixed the station of the Hymenoptera generally, we have next to seek the relative rank of the natural divisions into which they readily separate.

Taking structure and instinct conjunctively, there can be no doubt that the first position will be conceded to that division of the Order which comprises the aculeated tribes—those armed with stings,—some of whose members, in each of the three large divisions into which they fall, being social, that is, living in communities, organized by a peculiar polity or administration.

These aculeates divide into, first, the _fossorial Hymenoptera_, or burrowers; and the equivalent branch the _Diploptera_, or wasps, distinguished and named from their folding the superior wings longitudinally in repose; secondly, the _heterogeneous Hymenoptera_, or ants, named from the dissimilarity either in size or structure of their females, a peculiarity incidental to all the social Hymenoptera, but living in community is more peculiarly characteristic of this division, it being in the other divisions restricted to a few genera only, whereas here the solitary habit is the exceptional. In all cases of socialism there are three classes of individuals,—males, females, and abortive females. In the other social kinds of Hymenoptera, these abortive females, called neuters, perform the labours of the community, and they are always winged; whereas amongst the ants they are never winged, and they constitute civil and military departments, the former attending to domestic matters, and the latter making predatory excursions to enslave the inhabitants of other communities, to aid their civilians in their many duties.

The third and last division of the aculeate Hymenoptera contains the _Mellicolligeræ_, the bees, or honey-gatherers.

Thus each division of the aculeated Hymenoptera is closely linked to the others by the strong affinity of the social habits of some of the genera of their several families.

The food of these three divisions of the aculeated Hymenoptera differs considerably, the Fossores being raptorial flesh-feeders, which hunt down and destroy their prey, and supply it as food to their young; the _Heterogynæ_ are omnivorous,—grain, fruits, or carrion being equally welcome to them; but in these climates I am not aware that they destroy life, although their wide migrations within the tropics are undertaken in the very spirit of the Huns and Vandals, for they devastate everything they come across; but the whole family of bees are exclusively honey-feeders without any carnivorous propensities, and use their stings merely as weapons of defence.

Although all the social aculeates are edifiers, and although the wasp in its _papier mâché_ domicile may vie with the honey-bee in capacity and skill in the structure of the hexagons of the habitation it erects or suspends, which are as perfect, and almost as delicate, although fabricated of a coarser material than those within the hive, and wherein also the several compartments form a more homogeneous unity, and the uniformity of the several layers or floors is more in accordance with architectural symmetry,—yet must the palm of precedence be accorded to the bee, from the more elaborate and perfect development of the social instinctive faculty.

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. The ant is obtrusive and incommodious, making incursions upon the pantry, the store-room, the green-house, and the hothouse; disfiguring our flower-beds, and often disgusting us with our aliment by the impertinent intrusion of its appearance. But the bee stores up for us honey, whose cruses are as inexhaustible as the oil cruse of the good widow of Zarephath, and whose waxen shards furnish us with a beautifully soft light, which in Catholic worship adds solemnity to the rites of religion. In doing this the bee fulfils a sovereign function in the economy of nature, by the fertilization of the flowering plants, with which she reciprocates benefits; the preponderance, however, is importantly in favour of the flower.

If captious objectors should dispute the position we thus claim for the bees, we will willingly leave them the wasp with its sting, whilst we sedulously cultivate the active and industrious bee, whose associations range through all the fields of poetry, but nowhere more lusciously than in the beautiful compositions of the Sanskrit poets Kalidasa and Yayadeva.

The position of the family, whose English constituents I shall subsequently treat of, being thus fixed, I have next to explain the several subdivisions into which it is divided in the following arrangement.

I am prompted to propose this new distribution of the British bees, by the manifest imperfection of the several arrangements of them already extant. The defects of these systems I shall have occasion to exhibit in reference to the course I have been induced to take.

Mr. Kirby’s keenness of observation led him to surmise, from the absence of polliniferous brushes upon the posterior legs, or other parts of the body of some, that there might be a class of bees analogous to the cuckoo, amongst the birds, who did not rear their own young, or undertake any of the cares of maternity; but that led by a peculiar instinct they deposited their eggs in the nests of more laborious kinds, for their young to be nurtured upon the provision laid up in store by the latter for the supply of their own progeny. This being merely a supposition, Mr. Kirby made no use of it in the distribution of his families.

Observation has since confirmed the conjecture, and the fact lends material aid to the combination of the bees into detached groups, and which has been partially applied since by all systematizers.

Conjunctively with the assistance derived from this circumstance, the various modes whereby pollen is collected and conveyed, either on the legs or on the belly, further facilitates the grouping of the family. Other structural or economical peculiarities lend their aid, and although the arrangement primarily emanates from the differences in the formation of the tongue, these are corroborated by differences in other organs, and the general distribution, as well as the special combinations, all result from natural characteristics.

The simplicity of the arrangement thus effected is very striking; and we thus find all the bees having similar habits, and with a similar structure united together by it in distinct groups.

I will here insert my scheme, and exhibit why and in what it differs from those of my predecessors; and, where necessary, I shall append such observations upon the several methods extant, as will sufficiently show the necessity, and vindicate the introduction of a new one.

FAMILY MELLICOLLIGERÆ (Honey collectors).

Subfamily 1. ANDRENIDÆ (Subnormal Bees).

Section 1. _With lacerate paraglossæ._

Subsection _a_. WITH EMARGINATE TONGUES.

Genus 1. COLLETES.

2. PROSOPIS.

Subsection _b_. WITH LANCEOLATE TONGUES.

Genus 3. SPHECODES.

4. ANDRENA.

5. CILISSA.

Section 2. _With entire paraglossæ._

Subsection _c_. WITH ACUTE TONGUES.

Genus 6. HALICTUS.

7. MACROPIS.

8. DASYPODA.

Subfamily 2. APIDÆ (Normal Bees).