672 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



sheet of wax, unless it is to be eaten at once. The pollen is also deposited 

 in cells, but is rarely mixed with honey. The little pellets which the bees 

 carry in are packed tightly into cells, and if a cell of pollen be dug out of 

 the comb one can usually see the layers made by the different pellets. 

 This collecting of nectar and pollen continues throughout the summer 

 and ceases only with the death of the last flowers in the autumn. 



Almost as soon as the honey and pollen begin to come in, the queen of 

 the colony begins to lay eggs in the cells in the center combs. The title of 

 ■queen has been given to the female bee which normally lays all the eggs of 

 the colony, under the supposition that she governs the colony and directs 

 its activities. This we now know to be an error, but the name still remains 

 Her one duty in life is that of egg-laying. She is most carefully watched 

 over by the workers, and is constantly surrounded by a circle of attend- 

 ants who feed her and touch her with their antennae; but she in no way 

 dictates what shall take place in the hive. The eggs are laid in the bot- 

 tom of the hexagonal cells, being attached by one end to the center of 

 the base. The first eggs laid develop into workers, and are deposited in 

 cells one-fifth of an inch across. As the colony increases in size by the 

 hatching of these workers, and as the stores of honey and pollen increase, 

 the queen begins to lay in larger cells measuring one-fourth of an inch 

 across, and from the eggs laid in these cells drones develop. The size 

 of the cell does not determine the sex, as will be explained later; but the 

 queen almost invariably lays the worker eggs in the smaller cells and 

 the drone eggs in the larger ones. As these male eggs develop and hatch, 

 drones begin in the colony, generally about the first of May in temperate 

 climates. 



The eggs do not develop directly into adult bees, as might be inferred 

 from what has just been said; but after three days there hatches from 

 the egg a small white worm-like larva. For several days the larvae are 

 fed by the workers, and the amount of food consumed is truly remarkable. 

 The larva grows rapidly, until it fills the entire cell in which it lives, 

 and then the workers cover the cell with a cap of wax while the larva 

 inside spins a delicate cocoon under the cap. The worker brood can at 

 once be distinguished from the drone brood by the fact that the workers 

 place a flat cap over worker brood and a high arched cap over drone 

 brood; and this often is of great help to the beekeeper in enabling him 

 to determine at once what kind of brood any hive contains. Twenty-one 

 days from the time the egg is laid the young worker bee emerges from 

 its cell, having gone through some wonderful transformations during the 

 time it was sealed up, this stage being known as the pupa stage. For 

 drones the time is twenty-four days. 



About the time the drones begin to appear, the inmates of the hive 

 begin to prepare for swarming, which to anyone watching the habits of 

 bees is one of the most interesting things that takes place in the colony. 



The workers now begin to make queen cells. In our previous descrip- 

 tion of the development of the young from the egg nothing was said 

 about the queen, and there are some decided differences in her growth 

 which we will now take up. 



As was stated earlier, the queen and the workers are all females. 

 Schirach, an old authority on bees, discovered that the bees can take a 



