The name of this genus, _Apis_, adopted by Linnæus as the classical generic name of the bee, although with him it comprised the whole modern family of these insects, but which, as now restricted, in accordance with its limitation exclusively to the congeners of his adopted type, is the ancient Latin vernacular name of the honey-bee, and to which it has been ever since uniformly attached. This name, as shown by its derivative meaning, was originally imposed with direct reference to the insect’s constructive habits, as was the case with the names given to it in the more primitive languages before referred to, and which is also the origin of its Teutonic and Scandinavian appellations—_Biene_, _Bie_, and _Bi_, whence our own common name for it is obtained through the Saxon _Beo_, and we have beside Bye or bee, signifying _a dwelling_. From this circumstance it would seem that a very early and universal discernment existed of its ingenuity and skill, its significant name being everywhere analogous.
The habits and economy of these industrious little creatures have been a source of greater wonder and admiration the more closely and accurately they have been observed. They have attracted the thoughtful speculation of minds of the largest compass throughout all ages, which, reasoning upon the _modus operandi_ of these insects, have endeavoured to define, and determine the differences between instinct and reason, with their precise limitations. But baffled in their attempt to settle whether these be affinities or analogies, it should rather have persuaded them to adopt the motto of Montaigne, and exclaim, _Que sais-je?_ Into these metaphysical discussions it is not necessary to enter, and I confine myself to the natural history of the insect.
Although the description of the three sexes which comprise the population of the hive are technically given above with scientific precision, it will be as well, perhaps, to recapitulate them briefly, with their distinctive attributes, in a more popular form.
They consist of a queen, or productive female, whose function is thought to be exclusively to lay eggs, but who may perhaps have some hitherto undiscovered control over the executive of the hive, to be implied by the confusion invariably following her death or her removal from the community, and which becomes totally destructive to its organic constituency unless stayed by another monarch being improvised, or by one extraneously supplied; one monarch alone rules without a coadjutor, and without any equal being tolerated, for the presence of a second queen, or the immature larva of one, even of her own progeny, maddens her to murderous aggression, or to the impulse of emigration accompanied with a host of adherents. She never leaves the hive when once her duties have fully commenced, for by distinction of structure she is rendered incompetent to execute any of the labours that devolve upon the workers; her tongue is formed only to lap nutriment; she has no cysts for the secretion of wax, she is without the honey-bag for conveying that liquid home, and her posterior shanks are convex externally, and thus deficient in the concave basket for carrying home the stores of pollen or propolis, whilst their plantæ are without the little earlet at the top externally, or the close dense brush arranged in rows within, which aid these workers in their many manipulations. Her wings are too short to convey her ponderous body through the air, and her sting becomes stronger by being curved. Thus she is exonerated from labour by the incapacity of her structure to execute it, although her duties are quite as incessant and as arduous, being indispensable to the perpetuation of the species.