A further characteristic of these genera, and in which they participate with _Apis_, is the deficiency of spurs to the posterior tibiæ, which separates them from all other genera of bees, as also from _Bombus_, which has two, yet with which, in point of their economy, they more closely assimilate than with _Apis_. They are the South American and Australian indigenous representatives of the genus _Apis_, and are found likewise in Java and Sumatra, and in some of the larger and extreme islands of the Indian Archipelago, thus also similarly in countries where marsupial animals occur. Like _Apis_, they are social in their habits; but their neuters only are as yet known, neither males nor females having been described. They are reputed to be stingless, and to make honey and wax in enormous quantities. The combs in _Mellipona_ are attached either to the branches of trees or are suspended from them, but how they are enveloped for security is not reported, but sometimes, like _Apis_, they construct them within hollow trees and in the cavities of rocks, as in _Trigona_, in like manner as _Apis_ does in its natural state. Their communities are not so large as those of the hive bee, and the cells of their combs are less perfectly hexagonal, the wax being expended upon them in denser quantities, whereas the hive bee is exceedingly parsimonious in the use of this material, a circumstance arising possibly from the different and more difficult mode the latter have of obtaining it. In the latter it is a secretion; but these exotic genera possibly collect their wax ready-made by the exudation of plants, and, thus, having more readily obtained it, they are more lavish in its use. Early travellers and historians describe many kinds of honey made by these bees, native to the South American continent, but they report nothing of the peculiarities of the social economy of these insects, nor whether they are as closely allied in this respect to _Apis_, as they are in the collection of honey and wax. To enter into further detail relative to them would be beyond the province of this work, and I have only given this extremely superficial and brief notice of foreign genera, to show what multitudes of others of this interesting family await admiration and study, when some proficiency has been acquired in the knowledge of our own. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER V PARASITES OF BEES AND THEIR ENEMIES.