Tue Honey BEE. 193 
Tue Honey Bre: Its Naturat History, Anatomy, &c. By 
HENRY Marrs. 
Much has been written on the subject which I have the 
pleasure of bringing before you this evening, and still there is 
much in dispute regarding seeing, hearing, and smelling in the 
honey bee. Mr T. W. Cowan, in his book on the anatomy, etc., 
of the bee, quotes no less than 126 writers on the subject. Much 
has also been written on beekeeping, and still there is much mis- 
conception amongst beekeepers on that part of the subject too. 
Some time ago a lecturer before the Society of Arts in London 
said that beekeeping in some parts of England had made no pro- 
gress during the last 2000 years. This may seem an exaggeration, 
but seeing that bees are still killed to take the honey it is not so. 
Columella, a Roman writer on agriculture, who lived nearly 1900 
years ago, dealt with apiculture in one of his books, giving instruc- 
tion on the best situation and management of an apiary, which is 
far in advance of the methods carried out in some rural districts at 
the present time, and might almost be an extract from a book on 
modern beekeeping. But I have been asked to confine myself 
to-night to the natural history, anatomy, etc., of the bee, which I 
now proceed to. If we take a hive of bees in June, we will 
find three different kinds of bees therein. |The queen, which is 
the mother ; the drones or male bee, and the workers, which are 
undeveloped females. These, the workers, were at one time 
thought to be neuters, but that is not so, they being produced from 
the same egg as the queen. The male bee is brought into exist- 
ence at the beginning of summer for the purpose of impregnating 
the queen, and is destroyed at the end of the swarming season. 
There is only one queen in a hive, a few hundred drones, and 
from 50 to 70,000 workers. If the hive becomes too crowded, 
preparations are made by the bees to swarm. Large cells are 
formed, hanging downward, something like an acorn in shape. 
In these cells the queen deposits an egg, which hatches on the 
fourth day. It is fed on chyle food till the 9th day, when the cell 
is sealed over, the bee leaving the cell on the 15th day. As soon 
as the cell is sealed over the queen and nearly all the flying bees 
leave the hive and form a new colony. On the 15th day a virgin 
queen hatches, and, if the bees are willing to allow this first- 
hatched queen her own way, she will destroy, assisted by the bees 
