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The Melipona itself is intermediate in structure between the hive and humble bee, but more nearly related to the latter: it forms a nearly regular waxen comb of cylindrical cells, in which the young are hatched, and, in addition, some large cells of wax for holding honey. These latter cells are nearly spherical and of nearly equal sizes, and are aggregated into an irregular mass.
Again, from the same cause, it would be advantageous to the Melipona, if she were to make her cells closer together, and more regular in every way than at present; for then, as we have seen, the spherical surfaces would wholly disappear, and would all be replaced by plane surfaces; and the Melipona would make a comb as perfect as that of the hive-bee.
The two half tubes, when finished, are secured together by a very close and tight spirally-wound strapping, consisting of long flat strips of Jacitara, or the wood of the climbing palm-tree; and the whole is smeared afterwards with black wax, the production of a Melipona bee. The pipe tapers towards the muzzle, and a cup-shaped mouthpiece, made of wood, is fitted in the broad end.
Good cause, certainly, is hereby shown for believing that the cell-making faculty of the hive bee may be nothing more than the aggregate of many minute and successive improvements upon that of the melipona, and this, again, than a similar aggregate of improvements on that of the humble bee; and for believing further that hive bee and melipona may both be either descendants from the humble bee, or joint-descendants with it from some still earlier common progenitor.
We will now adduce a few cases in which beetles imitate other insects, and insects of other orders imitate beetles. Charis melipona, a South American Longicorn of the family Necydalidæ, has been so named from its resemblance to a small bee of the genus Melipona.
In order to believe this it suffices to believe that a bee which at one period made, like the humble bee, cells very unequally sized and irregularly rounded, came gradually, in the course of time, to make them as nearly equal in size and as nearly spherical as those of the melipona; and subsequently, during a further lapse of time, came to arrange them at the same distances from each other, and in double layers like those of the humble bee.
Hence it would continually be more and more advantageous to our humble-bee, if she were to make her cells more and more regular, nearer together, and aggregated into a mass, like the cells of the Melipona; for in this case a large part of the bounding surface of each cell would serve to bound other cells, and much wax would be saved.
It is well known that never more than a very small store of honey is found in felled trees inhabited by stingless Melipona. What should induce the Melipona to accumulate stores which they could not preserve? They lack formic acid. Only three of the eighteen different known species of honey bees of northern Brazil have a sting.
As in the cells of the hive-bee, so here, the three plane surfaces in any one cell necessarily enter into the construction of three adjoining cells. It is obvious that the Melipona saves wax by this manner of building; for the flat walls between the adjoining cells are not double, but are of the same thickness as the outer spherical portions, and yet each flat portion forms a part of two cells.
Hence it would continually be more and more advantageous to our humble-bee, if she were to make her cells more and more regular, nearer together, and aggregated into a mass, like the cells of the Melipona; for in this case a large part of the bounding surface of each cell would serve to bound other cells, and much wax would be saved.
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