ADAPTATION 341 



A honeybee colony can be understood by regarding it as a 

 compound organism, in which the various and specialized activ- 

 ities of the individual members are to be interpreted in terms of 

 the colony as a unit. A colony normally consists of a single 

 queen bee, the mother of the colony, thousands of sexually 

 undeveloped females, called workers, and, during part of the 

 year, some hundreds of drones or males. The queen alone is 

 capable of laying eggs. The workers, though genetically 

 females, have no part in reproduction. They build the wax 

 comb, gather food, keep the hive clean, feed the young, ventilate 

 the hive — in short take care of the entire colony. The function 

 of the drone is to inseminate the queen, a single insemination 

 providing the queen with sufficient spermatozoa to last her life- 

 time. These three forms differ in size and structure (Fig. 192), 

 the worker being the smallest of the three. Under natural con- 

 ditions, the colony inhabits a hollow tree or similar cavity, but it 

 thrives equally well in an artificial hive. The comb of the hive 

 is formed of wax secreted by the workers. It is slab-shaped and 

 consists of a double layer of tubular cells, hexagonal in cross sec- 

 tion and open at their outer ends (Fig. 193). The cells of the two 

 sides of the comb are separated by a septum running through the 

 center of the comb parallel to its two faces. The cells are pitched 

 at a slight angle, the bottom of the cell being slightly lower than 

 the opening. They serve as brood chambers for developing bees 

 and as storage places for pollen and honey. Those used for 

 rearing workers are about } 4 in. in width, and those for rearing 

 drones and storing honey measure about 34 in- across. These 

 make up the majority of the cells. At certain times, the worker 

 bees enlarge some worker cells for rearing queens (Fig. 194). 



With the coming of warm weather in the spring, the queen 

 begins to lay eggs in the worker cells, one egg to a cell. The eggs 

 develop into white grubs or larvae which are fed by the workers. 

 At the end of the larval period the grub completely fills the cell, 

 which is then capped by the workers. During the quiescent 

 stage that follows the larva is gradually transformed into a pupa 

 and then into an imago, or adult stage, after which it emerges as 

 a worker bee. The first activities of the workers are inside the 

 hive where they engage in secreting wax, caring for the new 

 brood of young (developing in the meantime from eggs laid by 

 the queen) and in cleaning the hive. Later they join the outside 



