THE ITALIAN HONEY-BEE. 531 



shall state simply such leading facts of their general history as may seem neces- 

 sary for a clear understanding of the particular subjects upon which it is pro- 

 posed to treat. 



A colony or hive of bees in its normal condition, during the honey season, 

 contains three kinds of bees, viz : " The queen," " workers," and "drones." In 

 addition to these, under certain other conditions, there sometimes exists anothei* 

 kind called "fertile workers," of which I shall speak hereafter. 



The queen is the only fully developed female in the hive. She is impreg- 

 nated but once, copulating with the drone on the wing and high up in the air, 

 which, if delayed beyond three weeks after she is hatched, she remains unim- 

 pregnated for life, producing drone eggs only. She is capable of laying two 

 thousand or more eggs in twenty-four hours. She has a sting, but uses it only in 

 deadly conflict with another queen. She lives to the age of four or five years. 

 When she begins to show evidence of decrepitude her " workers " rear another 

 to take her place, and both are tolerated and protected by the workers in the 

 hive until the young queen becomes fecundated and capable of filling the duties 

 of her ancestor. 



The drones are the male bees. They have no sting, are not provided with 

 the means suitable for gathering honey or secreting wax, and except that by 

 the heat of their bodies they aid in rearing brood, they appear to have no duties 

 to perform except the impregnation of the queen, which instantly causes the death 

 of the copulating drone. Their numbers depend greatly upon the quantity of 

 "drone comb," (which is composed of larger cells than the "worker comb,") 

 which is contained in the hive. They have no sting, and unless the colony is 

 queenless, are destroyed by the workers as soon as the honey harvest has passed 

 and swarming ceased. 



The workers are females, whose ovaries are so imperfectly developed as to 

 incapacitate them for laying eggs. They gather the honey, build the combs, hatch 

 and nurse the young, raise queens, and perform generally the laborious duties 

 of the hive. They are seldom able to sting more than once, as the sting re- 

 mains fastened by its barbs in the wound, and being, with its poison-sack, 

 drawn from the abdomen of the bee, soon causes its death. 



By puffing smoke into their hives, or keeping them in a state of great alarm 

 for twenty or thirty minutes, they will gorge themselves with honey, and be- 

 come perfectly good-natured and harmless, unless squeezed or hurt, and may 

 then be handled with perfect impunity. During the honey harvest, when their 

 labors are constant and heavy, they often die within three or four months ; but 

 those bred later in the summer and fall, when the honey season is passed, and 

 whose labors are light, survive until the following May or June. Usually the 

 queen will lay only as many eggs at a time as her colony of workers are capa- 

 ble of hatching and feeding. Should she exceed this number, however, the 

 workers have a convenient method of correcting her mistake by eating the ex- 

 cess. The eggs are hatched by the heat of the bodies of the mature bees, the 

 workers of which also feed and nurse them until mature — the queens requiring 

 sixteen, the workers tAveuty-oue, and drones twenty-four days, for their full 

 development, counting from the time the egg is laid. A low degree of tem- 

 perature in the hive may lengthen these periods a day or two, and a very high 

 temperature, on the contrary, may shorten it a day. 



Few, if any, bees are bred in the latitude of the northern and middle States 

 between the first day of November and the following February, during which 

 many, having reached their appointed time, die, while others perish from ex- 

 posure to cold and other causes ; thus often reducing their numbers one-half 

 between the first and last periods, at which time the queen again resumes her 

 laying, and continues it, to a greater or less extent, until the following October 

 or November. 



