24 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE- 



of feeding their younger brothers and sisters. They have not been 

 out of the hive yet. They don't go out to work till they are 

 about 14 days old. They then give up their nursing duties and 

 become field labourers. Those capped cells that stand oiit more 

 prominently ? Oh, there are young drones in there, they will 

 remain in the cells about forty hours longer than the worker ; you 

 see the cells are more bulky every way than the workers. That 

 dark substance in these cells is bee-bread, made from that pollen 

 you saw the bees carrying in on their hinder legs. That, eaten 

 by the nurse bees, with a little honey and water added, is the 

 material the young bees are fed upon whilst they are in the cells. 

 No, these big bees out there are not queens, there is only one 

 queen. Well, there is very likely to be one or two unhatched 

 queens ; these are always more or less present in the spring and 

 also in summer, if the season is good Why are there so many 

 drones, when there is only one queen ! You will learn that further 

 on. That long bee there is the queen ? The first you ever saw 1 

 Yes; she is easily picked out when you know her. Not much 

 difference, only much larger ? To you there may not be, but I 

 can see a vast difference between her and a worker even externally. 

 True, she has six rings to her body, and four wings and six legs, 

 the same as a worker. Those two legs nearest the head of the 

 worker are very similar to those of the queen. They both carry 

 little combs in them for the purpose of cleaning their horns 

 (^antennae). In the hinder legs of the queen there are no baskets 

 to carry the pollen, neither has she those little nippers for relnov- 

 ing the wax scales from the pockets that the worker has. The 

 middle pair of legs in the worker contains a crowbar to lever out 

 the pollen from the baskets. This is not so with the queen. The 

 legs of the queen and the drone more nearly resemble each other 

 than those of the queen and the worker. I will pick up the queen 

 by the wing. I must handle her very gently or I may injure her 

 for life, or she may become what bee-keepers term a drone layer. 

 Oh, yes, she has a sting, and a very formidable one too. It is the 

 drone has no sting. No, she won't sting. She can if she wishes 

 to, but as a rule she only uses it on rival queens ; her sting is not 

 like that of the worker — that is straight, like a fine needle, but 

 the queen's is somewhat curved. You would like to see the cell 

 the queen lives in? She does not live in a cell. Her home is 

 anywhere in the hive ; but usually she is to be found on comb, in 

 the cells of which she is laying. That large knob there, some- 

 thing like a lady's thimble, is a queen's cell ; that is the cell from 



