comstock] OBSERVATION BEE-HIVE 113 



This may be accomplished by buying the bees of a regular dealer; 

 and if the teacher has four or five dollars to devote to setting- 

 up the hive, this would be the best way to do. But if there is 

 no money for buying bees then the nearest apiarist should be 

 asked to donate a brood-frame filled with comb nearly covered 

 with bees, with a queen-cell in it or provided with a laying queen 

 already at work. If he is not generous enough to make the dona- 

 tion, the expense of buying this amount of bees should not be 

 more than one dollar. 



The hive should be placed in a second-story window if the 

 school is in a village ; if there is no second story, then a window 

 should be chosen which faces away from the playground and the 

 street, for bees do not like to have company in their front yards. 



After the hive is set up and the bees are well at work the 

 pupils will eagerly observe the citizens and the industries of the 

 hive. The citizens are of three kinds, the workers, which do 

 all the labor of the hive ; the queen, which is the mother of all 

 members of the colony and the drones, which are the idle sons 

 of the queen mother. The great mass of bees on the comb are 

 workers ; in size they are smaller than either queen or drones. 

 The queen has a long, pointed body which extends far behind her 

 wings, and she is decidedly larger than the workers. The drone 

 is also larger than the worker and his body ends bluntly behind 

 his wings almost as if it had been cut off with a shears. 



The industries of the hive are building of comb ; the gathering 

 and storing of honey and pollen ; feeding the young ; feeding and 

 caring for the queen ; keeping the house clean ; stopping all 

 crevices with bee-glue ; and fanning with the wings to set up a 

 draft through the hive, so that it will not be too warm and that 

 the uncapped honey may ripen. All of these duties are performed 

 by the workers. In order to make the comb they have first to 

 secrete the wax, which they accomplish by gorging themselves 

 with honey and remaining suspended while the wax exudes in 

 little, white plates from wax-glands on the lower surface of the 

 abdomen. The wax is collected and chewed to make it less brittle 

 and then put in place. The whole process of building the geomet- 

 rical cells of the comb may be observed. All of the work done 

 by the queen is the laying of eggs. It should be noted that she is 

 always surrounded by her devoted ladies-in-waiting, who feed 

 her and care for her most tenderlv. While the drone takes no 



