The last inhabitant of the hive is the WORKER, or abortive female, whose labour has several phases. A difference of size amongst them has been supposed to have been noticed by observers as varying with their occupation and duties, but as they are all constructed in the same manner, with precisely the same organs, which are of the same form and in the same situation, this must be a mere imaginative surmise. Their similarity of structure permits them, collectively, to apply themselves to the same occupations which the needs of the community may at any moment demand. Taking them separately with their distinctive occupations at any given time, without implying by it a permanent separation of classes, we find them to consist of wax secreters, builders or cell-sculpturers, honey collectors, pollen collectors, propolis collectors, nurses of the young, ventilators, undertakers to carry off the dead, who are perhaps also the scavengers which cleanse away any occasional dirt, sentinels to guard the hive outside and inside, and attendants upon the queen, or as the “‘Times’ Bee Master” very aptly designates them “ladies in waiting,” and at all times many slumberers are reposing from their toils. That all these duties are transferable, and consequently are transferred indifferently from one to the other, is implied by their general capacity for fulfilling them resulting from this identity of structure, which will be understood as not at all infringed by the separate capacities I unfold as devolving from their temporarily limited functions, all being simultaneously in action, but distributed amongst the several individuals.