get aided by those members who have the adiantages of 

 possessing such magnificent microscopes as I see before me 

 this day in Dover. I shall take only the history of the 

 Queen bee, as the bulk of every swarm consists only of two 

 kinds of bees, the workers and the drones, the latter (the 

 males) are only raised during part of the year, bred in May 

 and killed in August or July, and as Butler describes him : 

 *' He spendeth his time in gluttony and idleness," and this 

 " lazy yawning drone " is killed before the winter by the 

 workers, to save their stores of honey and pollen ; but his 

 history I leave for another question. The Queen bee and 

 the worker bee being one and the same, except to make the 

 head of the family or swarm ; a selected egg of the worker 

 is raised to royalty, and has been thus named Queen, as the 

 fertile bee and worker, when sterile and undeveloped are 

 employed in the work and labour of love, in storing and 

 collecting the honey and pollen, constructing cells of the 

 combs, watching and warming the broad cells, feeding and 

 rearing the young bees, &c. But the fact that startles the 

 imagination is, that the Queen and the worker being raised 

 from the same kind of egg, should materially alter in form 

 and structure ; but so it has been established. And the 

 only part of the bee that does not undergo that great 

 change are the eyes, which are of the composite construc- 

 tion, as called by entomologists, and consist of a vast collec- 

 tion of small hexagonal lenses (how far they effect the form 

 of the hexagonal cells bees build is a question !) There 

 may be 30 or 300, I forget which, but the microscopes 

 will show us to-day, disposed with exquisite regularity, 

 each lense being itself a telescope through which the 

 bee spies out its point of attack, and which 

 attack, fortunately, the bee master is able from 

 experience to avoid, by gently moving out of the line of 

 flight, which flight commonly (when not directed towards 

 any purpose) is always at an angle of forty-five from the 

 starting line of the hive. Now let us compare then the 

 two bees, although both raised from the same kind of 



