202 



The Book of Bugs. 



If the drone is male and the queen female, what is the 

 worker? The New Woman of Bee-dom. She has given 

 up her motherhood for a business career. Sometimes, 

 though, she lays eggs, but they always hatch out drones, 

 of whom it is strictly true to say, They have a mother, 

 but no father. If the queen's wings are crippled so that 

 she cannot make her marriage-flight, her children are all 

 drones. An Italian queen in a hive of black bees will 

 beget workers of mixed blood, but her sons are pure 

 Italians. Drones are useful as fathers of workers, but 



Fig. 41. Drone. 



Queen. 



Worker. 



they cannot collect the honey they eat. Their tongues 

 are too short. 



The worm, when it hatches out of the egg, lies in its 

 cell surrounded by bee-milk, or ' royal jelly," as it is 

 called. As it grows in size and strength it is weaned, so 

 to speak, by having the milk diluted more and more with 

 pap made of pollen, honey, and water, till it finally lives 

 on grown-bee diet. If the worker is not weaned, if it 

 lives on the fat of the land till it spins its cocoon, it will 

 be a queen. I don't know how it would do to put little 



