"Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion; To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience: for so work the honey-bees; Creatures, that, by a rule in nature, teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king and officers of sorts: Where some, like magistrates, correct at home: Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad; Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds; Which pillage, they, with merry march, bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor: Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold; The civil citizens kneading up the honey; The poor mechanic-porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate; The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone." Of more recent writers we may mention the French Réaumur; the Swiss, Bonnet; and Huber, of Geneva, who, with his assistant Burnens, gave the world so many wondrous details of bee-life and habits. In our own country, Dr. John Hunter, Dr. John Evans, who has been called the "poet-laureate of bees," Shuckard, Sir John Lubbock, Cowan, John Hunter, Taylor, Cheshire, Alfred Neighbour, Pettigrew, Abbott, and many writers in the _British Bee Journal_, have largely added to our apiarian knowledge. Not only in America, but universally, the Rev. L. L. Langstroth, of Ohio, has a well-earned reputation for his researches and his practical instructions with regard to apiculture. In Germany, Dr. Dzierzon of Carlsmarkt, in Silesia, and Baron von Berlepsch, of Coburg, stand at the very head of authorities on all that relates to bees and bee-keeping. CHAPTER II. NATURAL HISTORY. Orders of Insects--Stages of Development--Egg, Larva, Pupa, Imago or Perfect Insect--Three Classes of Bees: Queen, Drones, Workers. It will be observed from the title of this book that it deals with the honey-bee. The necessity of this restriction will become immediately evident when we mention the fact that in Great Britain there are no less than twenty-seven genera and 177 species of native bees, none of which have been successfully domesticated except _Apis mellifica_, or the ordinary hive-bee. The term "insect" has unfortunately been loosely employed in popular parlance to include such diverse beings as coral-polyps and house-flies. As the name itself indicates, it is properly applicable only to such animals as are more or less distinctly divided into segments. All true insects, in fact, are plainly divisible in their perfect state into three portions, the head, thorax, and abdomen. The most important classes in this portion of the animal kingdom are distinguished by the characteristics of their wings, and are-- I. _Coleoptera_, or those possessing crustaceous _sheathing_ wing-covers, including all the beetles.