HONEY BEES 



The honey bee occurs in three castes, much more different 

 from one another than those of wasps or humble bees. The 

 males or drones are considerably larger and stouter than the 

 workers and have greatly enlarged eyes which cover most 

 of the surface of the head. The tongue is not well enough 

 developed to be useful for gathering nectar, though the drone 

 can feed himself on honey from the cells. He never does any 

 work in the hive. He lacks the wax-producing glands and the 

 pollen-collecting apparatus. The queen, also, is in some 

 respects a "degenerate " or at least specialised type, for she 

 also is unable to produce wax or to gather pollen or nectar. 

 She is a little larger, especially longer, than the worker and 

 has immensely developed ovaries which allow her to lay 

 one to two thousand eggs a day and hundreds of thousands 

 of eggs in her life-time. The worker has wax-glands on the 

 ventral side of the abdomen, has a pollen-basket on her hind 

 legs, and has mandibles better developed for work in the 

 hive than those of the queen. Normally the worker's ovaries 

 are small and non-functional and the little sac in which 

 sperm are stored in the queen is rudimentary. 



Occasionally, particularly in certain varieties, a worker's 

 ovaries develop and she lays eggs which normally produce 

 only drones. Very exceptionally, by a process which is not 

 understood, some unfertilised worker eggs may produce 

 new workers or even queens, especially in some African 

 strains. As a rule, however, as in other bees and wasps, only 

 the fertilised eggs of the queen can produce queens or workers. 

 The honey bee is thus committed to a completely social life, 

 since the queen cannot found a colony alone like a queen 

 humble bee, while the workers cannot normally reproduce 

 themselves. 



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