INTERRELATIONS OF INSECTS 325 
or less irregular in form, and vertical instead of horizontal; 
they are attached usually to the lower edge of a comb or else 
to one of the side edges. 
Other Facts.—The entire organization of the honey bee 
has been profoundly modified with reference to floral struc- 
ture; the life of the bee is wrapped up in that of the flower. 
The more important structural adaptations of bees in relation 
to flowers have been described, as well as many of their sen- 
sory peculiarities; there remain to be added, however, some 
other items of interest, chosen from the many. 
A colony of bees in good condition at the opening of the 
season contains a laying queen and some 30,000 to 40,000 
worker bees, or six to eight quarts by measurement. Besides 
this there should be four, five, or even more combs fairly 
stocked with developing brood, with a good supply of honey 
about it. Drones may also be present, even to the number of 
several hundred. 
Ordinarily the queen mates but once, flying from the hive 
to meet the drone high in the air, when five to nine days old 
generally. Seminal fluid sufficient to impregnate the greater 
number of eggs she will deposit during the next two or three 
years (sometimes even four or five years) is stored at the time 
of mating in a sac—the spermatheca, opening into the egg- 
passage. At the time the queen mates, there are in the hive 
neither eggs nor young larve from which to rear another 
queen ; hence, should she be lost, no more fertilized eggs would 
be deposited, and the old workers gradually dying off without 
being replaced by young ones, the colony would become extinct 
in the course of a few months at most, or meet a speedier fate 
through intruders, such as wax-moth larve, robber bees, 
wasps, ete., which its weakness would prevent its repelling 
longer; or cold is very likely to finish such a decimated colony, 
especially as the bees, because queenless, are uneasy and do 
not cluster compactly. 
The liquid secreted in the nectaries of flowers is usually quite 
thin, containing, when just gathered, a large percentage of 
