Insect Study 



453 



INDUSTRIES OF THE HIVE AND THE OBSERVATION HIVE 



Teacher's Story 



EE-hives are the houses which man furnishes for 

 the bee colonies, the wild bees ordinarily living 

 in hollow trees or in caves. The usual hive 

 consists of a box which is the lower story and 

 of one or more upper stories, called "supers." 

 In the lower story are placed frames for the 

 brood and for storing the honey for the winter 

 use of the bees. In the supers are placed the 

 sections, each of which is planned to hold a 

 pound of honey. It is the habit of the bees to 

 place their brood in the lower part of their 

 nests and store honey in the upper portions. 



The bee-keepers have taken advantage of this habit of the bees and 

 remove the supers with their filled sections and replace them with others 

 to be filled, and thus get a large crop of honey. The number of bees in a 

 colony varies; there should be at least 40,000 in a healthy colony. Of 

 these a large proportion are workers ; there may be a few hundred drones 

 the latter part of the season but only one queen. 



Honey-comb is built of wax and is hung from the frame so that the 

 cells are horizontal; its purpose is to cradle the young and for the storage 

 of pollen and honey. The wax used for building the comb is a secretion 

 of the bees; when comb is needed, a number of self-elected bee citizens 

 gorge themselves with honey and hang themselves up in a curtain, each 

 bee reaching up w r ith her fore feet and taking hold of the hind feet of the 

 one above her. After remaining thus for some time the wax appears in 

 little plates, one on each 

 side of the second, 

 third, fourth and fifth 

 segments of the abdo- 

 men. This wax is 

 chewed by the bees 

 and made into comb. 



Honey is made from 

 the nectar of flowers 

 which the bee takes 

 into her honey stom- 

 ach. This, by the way, 

 is not the true stomach 

 of the bee and has 

 nothing to do with 

 digestion. It is simply 

 a receptacle for storing 

 the nectar, which is 

 mixed with some secre- 

 tion from the glands of 

 the bee which brings 

 about chemical 

 changes, the chief of 

 which is changing the A home-made observation hive. 



