XLIV. HOW FLOWERS ARE FERTILISED 115 XLV. CONCLUSION 118 [Illustration: PLATE I From a photograph by] [E. Hawks Drone Queen Worker The Three Kinds of Bees] BEES CHAPTER I ABOUT THE BEE No matter how small an insect may be, it is sure to teach us something interesting if we study its habits, and try to find out how the various parts of its body are used. Perhaps of all the thousands of different insects upon the earth, the most wonderful of all are Bees. When we speak of bees we generally think of those which live in the white hives we sometimes see in gardens; these are the bees kept by a man to make honey for him. You will perhaps be surprised, therefore, to learn that there are over 2000 different kinds of bees known at the present time, and that over 200 of these species are found in Great Britain. These include the different kinds of hive bees and also the wild bees, for there are races of bees just as there are races of mankind. In this little book I hope to tell you about the hive bee, or, as it is called by its Latin name, _Apis mellifica_ (“the honey bee”). In the first few chapters we shall learn something about the body of the bee, and its different limbs and organs. Later on we shall consider the construction of the hive, and the habits of the bees which dwell therein. The word insect comes from the Latin, and means “divided into parts.” If you look at the body of a bee, or of any other insect, you will find that it is divided into three parts. These three divisions are respectively known as the Head, the Thorax, and the Abdomen. The head carries the _antennæ_ or feelers, as they may be called; the thorax, or chest, has the wings and legs joined to it; whilst the abdomen, or hindermost part of the body, contains the stomach and internal organs. There are three kinds of bees in a hive--the Queen, the Drone, and the Worker, and a picture of these is seen in Plate I. Only one queen bee is found in each hive, though there may be several hundred drones and perhaps 50,000 or 60,000 workers. The number of the workers and drones varies according to the size of the hive and the time of the year.