No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 317 



produce the bees. She is caijable of hiyiug two kinds of eggs, fer- 

 tile and unfertile, the first producing workers, or queens, and the 

 second drones. This production of drones from unfertilized eggs 

 is one of the most interesting phases of the economy of the bee. 

 The queen develops from a fertile egg, in a length- wise-shaped cell. 

 The development of her sexual organs is due to special feeding she 

 receives while in the larval state. The drone is the male bee. 

 Queens mate with the drone once for life. The copulation takes 

 place in the air while both insects are on the wing. The drone's 

 reproductive organs remain in the queen and the drone expires im- 

 mediately after the mating. There are many more drones about 

 than ever mate with queens, and these surplus drones are driven 

 from the hives by the workers when the need for them is no longer 

 felt and when the honey supply begins to decline. 



The worker bees are undeveloped females and they attend to 

 all the duties of the hive. For the first sixteen days after they 

 hatch they do inside work exclusively. After that time they be- 

 come field bees and carry honey, pollen and propolis from the field. 



The bee-hives in use to-day are most of them relics of a former 

 generation. Many bees are still in box-hives. If they are in mov- 

 able comb-hives the pattern has long since ceased to be used by the 

 best bee-keepers. The modern bee-hive allows every comb to be 

 moved about and the relative positions of the combs changed. The 

 manufacturers of bee-keepers' supplies are inclined to devise a great 

 many useless little parts for hives which are always in the road, or 

 lost, and have to be stored when not in use. It is not these I recom- 

 mend, but simplicity in hive construction and at the same time hives 

 capable of examination without unnecessarily disturbing the bees. 

 Hives should be capable of almost unlimited expansion or contrac- 

 tion. Contraction is allowed by the movable comb and expansion is 

 possible when every hive can be placed above or below any other — 

 with hive bodies which can be tiered up. 



Many men to-day try to handle bees without the necessary precau 

 tion taken even by the best bee-keepers and then think bees are a 

 bother to handle and do nothing but sting. A good bellows-smoker 

 is a necessity if bees are to be handled with any comfort. Such 

 an instrument consists of a bellows attached to a fire pot. The 

 bellows forces air through the fire pot and blows the smoke out the 

 top. A smoker can be bought for from seventy-five cents to a dollar 

 and is worth it. The hooks which come attached to smokers are 

 very much in the way and hook into one's flesh as often as into any- 

 thing and had better be left off. The smoker can be held by the 

 bellows between the knees, where it is always ready and convenient 

 when wanted. 



The greatest menace to the bee-keeping industry to-day is disease. 



