2 8o READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



ex'changing places they were kept warm by their own body heat (com- 

 bustion of sugars). The healthy cluster maintains a temperature of 57° or 

 above. 



Bees can not void their excrement except when flying; at least it is be- 

 lieved they do not. During the winter their abdomens become greatly dis- 

 tended with waste matter. If their stores are of inferior honey, this condi- 

 tion will be intensified and may prove fatal. If wintered out of doors, bees 

 usually find days in Januar)^ or February when they can fly out. Hence, 

 wintering out of doors with sufficient protection is better than wintering 

 in a cold cellar, for in the latter case so-called cleansing flights are impos- 

 sible. Since bees can live all winter with only honey, i. e., water and carbo- 

 hydrate for food, during these periods they use protein sparingly in their 

 life processes, and they must be in a state of extreme protein starvation 

 when spring comes. There are in honey, usually, a few grains of pollen, 

 and some pollen is commonly stored in the hive in the cells separate from 

 the honey. Perhaps from these sources bees get a sufficient protein ration, 

 but I think they eat only honey in winter. 



The personnel of a colony of bees consists of three castes or classes: 

 drones, workers and queen. 



Drones are male bees. They are much larger than the workers, and are 

 present in a hive by tens or hundreds. The drones can not gather honey or 

 pollen and can not even feed themselves, but are fed by the workers. They 

 buzz very viciously but have no sting. Their sole contribution to a colony 

 of bees is to mate with the queen, and since a queen mates but once in 

 her life, very few drones ever mate. Drones are reared from June into 

 summer. In September the workers drive them out from the hive and pre- 

 vent their return. So they starve to death or die of cold. 



Drones are the product of unfertilized eggs laid normally in the larger 

 cells of the comb. All drones, therefore, are fatherless, though they have 

 grandfathers and stepfathers, because queens and workers develop from 

 fertilized eggs, and have a male parent. And a drone which mates with a 

 queen will be the male parent of hundreds of workers and a dozen or more 

 queens. 



Beekeepers always think of drones as lazy, happy-go-lucky louts, with 

 nothing to do but eat, sleep and buzz about on sunny days, waiting for an 

 occasion for mating. But for the drone, the mating is a serious matter, for 

 the act is fatal. The queen returns to the hive with the end of the abdomen 

 of the male torn off and hanging to her. 



There are from 20,000 to 50,000 (some say 80,000) workers in a strong 

 colony. The worker is an unsexed female, with only rudimentary ovaries, 

 but in a queenless colony one or more of the workers may acquire the ca- 

 pacity to lay eggs. Probably this condition is brought about by the exces- 

 sive feeding of selected young bees. Such "laying workers" never leave the 

 hive and never mate. Hence they never lay fertilized eggs; their eggs are 



