Social Insects. 7 



ing out one of the brood combs, which is rendered easy by the 

 movable frames, thousands of the bees are seen adhering to 

 the surface of the comb. They are mostly workers, but in 

 summer there may be seen numbers of stouter-bodied bees, 

 which are the drones or males. If the bees have not been too 

 much disturbed by the smoke or the removal of the comb, the 

 queen may be seen walking slowly over the surface, surrounded 

 by the workers, who, in deference, recede as she walks along, turn 

 ing their heads toward her and advancing so as to touch her body 

 with their antennae. It was long thought that the queen exer 

 cises sovereign powers, and Shakespeare voices the popular 

 opinion when, in Henry V, he says : 



"They have a king and officers of sorts." 



One of the earliest definitions of a queen bee in Webster's dic 

 tionary was, "The sovereign of a swarm of bees." In reality, 

 however, the government of the hive is purely democratic. Each 

 works for the common welfare, and only so long as the indi 

 vidual, whether queen, drone, or worker, is useful to the com 

 munity, is it spared. With the exception of the drones, the 

 queen- is the only bee in the hive having the reproductive organs 

 fully developed, and she is, therefore, the mother of the colony. 

 During the more prolific season she lays two or three eggs in the 

 course of a minute, and often as many as four thousand in 

 twenty-four hours. Three days after deposition of the egg 

 the young larva is hatched. It is the office of the younger 

 workers, known as nurse-bees, to furnish these young larvae with 

 food, which they are assiduous in doing. In the case of the 

 worker larvae, five days suffice for full growth, when they nearly 

 fill the cells. As with most other soft-bodied larvae that 

 are embedded in a semi-liquid nutritious medium, we find 

 provision to prevent contamination of the environmental food 

 with excrementitious matter. The food supply is, in the first 

 place, highly nutritious, and nearly all capable of assimilation. 

 Lest, however, any portion of the waste should enter the food, 

 the larva is, according to Cheshire, rendered incapable of voiding 

 anything during the time of feeding. The arrested development 

 of the digestive system leaves the posterior inflection, which cor 

 responds with the after bowel, unconnected with the middle 

 bowel, and the slight accumulation of waste matter in this latter 



