APIS

In Mythology, a bull, to which divine honours were paid by the Egyptians, especially at Memphis. He was required to be black, with peculiar spots and marks. One of this description was always maintained; but not suffered to live beyond twenty-five years. He was then buried with much solemnity; and Belzoni ■was of opinion that the bones discovered in one of the sarcophagi disinterred by him, belonged to such an anim.il. The outrage made by the Persian conqueror Cambyses on the bull Apis, and the disasters which were supposed to have befallen him in consequence of that act, are detailed in the history of Hero dot us, book ii. Apis. (Lat. apis, a bee.) The Linnaean genus, now subdivided intq different families, is thus characterised: mouth horny; jaw and lip membranaceous at the tip; tongue inflected; feelers four, unequal, filiform; antennae short, filiform, those of the female sub clavate; wings flat; sting of the females and neuters pungent, and concealed in the abdomen. The insects of this extensive genus live, some of them, in large societies, and some are solitary; their food is the nectar of flowers, honey, and ripe fruit; the larva is soft and without feet; the pupa resembles the perfect insect. The characters of the Linnaean genus are applicable to a variety of forms, now the types of numerous subgenera, included by Latreillein a family of Aculeate Hymenopterous insects, under the term An tho phil a, or Mellifera. The habits of each of the subgenera of this family are replete with interest, arising from their social economy, and the separation of the individuals into three sexual modifications, Viz., the prolific females, or queens; the unprolific females, or workers; and the males, or drones. The policy of the hive-bee {Apis mellific a, Lin.) has been studied with so much diligence and detail, that we penetrate this mystery of nature with astonishment, and often feel inclined to regard what Huber relates, as fabulous. Neverthele , the highly interesting observations of the writer, and those especially on which his reputation chiefly rests, have been confirmed by subsequent observers, both scientific entomologists as well as practical apiarians. The hive-bee is distinguished from all other species of the modern genus Apis, by having the femora of the posterior pair of legs furnished with a smooth and concave plate on the outer surface, and fringed with hair, forming a basket adapted for the conveyance of pollen; and in being destitute of spines at the extremity; by the basal joint of the tarsi, in the workers, being of an oblong form, with its inner surface clothed with hairs disposed in transverse rows; by the tropin being of an elongated form, and the maxillary palpi being almost obsolete and consisting of a single joint. The different individuals of the social Apis mellific a more nearly resemble each other in their grade of dev elopement— as regards their locomotive powers, organs of sense, and instinctive endowments — than the ants. No individual among them is without wings; and the industry of the workers, or imperfect females, is le astonishing, at least their tasks are le arduous, than fall to the lot of the Apterous labourers of the ant tribes. As bees, like most other winged insects, are annuals, or go through the whole e ential economy of their existence within the year, the history of a year's existence includes the whole, and we have only to choose the point in the circle at which to commence it. As some individuals, however, always survive the winter, and begin to breed early in spring, forming a colony which quits the parent stock, we shall begin with tiiis colony, and trace their operations through the year. The first young swarm in this country is generally sent off in June. The migration seems to depend on want of space in the mother-hive, not on an instinctive desire of change on the part of the brood; for if there be space for the operations of the increasing community, bees will not [s. 75]