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workers, but in summer there may be seen numbers of stouter-bodied 
bees, which are the drones or males. If the bees have not been too 
much disturbed by the smoke or the removal of the comb, the queen 
may be seen walking slowly over the surface, surrounded by the work- 
ers, who, in deference, recede as she walks along, turning their heads 
toward her and advancing so as to touch her body with their antenne. 
It was long thought that the queen exercises sovereign powers, and 
Shakespeare voices the popular opinion when, in Henry V, he says: 
They have a king and officers of sorts. 
One of the earliest definitions of a queen bee in Webster’s dictionary 
was, “The sovereign of a swarm of bees.” In reality, however, the 
government of the hive is purely democratic. Each works for the com- 
mon welfare, and only so long as the individual, whether queen, drone, 
or worker, 1s useful to the community, is it Spared. With the excep- 
tion of the drones, the queen is the only bee in the hive having the 
reproductive organs fully developed, and she is, therefore, the mother 
of the colony. During the more prolific season she lays two or three 
eggs in the course of a minute, and often as many as four thousand in 
twenty-four hours. Three days after deposition of the egg the young 
larva is hatched. Itis the office of the younger worker, known as 
nurse-bees, to furnish these young larve with food, which they are 
assiduous in doing. In the case of the worker larvee, five days suffice 
for full growth, when they nearly fill the cells. As with most other 
soft-bodied larvee that are imbedded ina semiliquid nutritious medium, 
we find provision to prevent contamination of the environmental food 
with excrementitious matter. The food supply is, in the first place, 
highly nutritious, and nearly all capable of assimilation. Lest, however, 
any portion of the waste should enter the food, the larva is, according 
to Cheshire, rendered incapable of voiding anything during the time of 
feeding. The arrested development of the digestive system leaves the 
posterior inflection, which corresponds with the atter bowel, unconnected 
with the middle bowel, and the slight accumulation of waste matter in 
this latter is cast into the base of the cell at the last molt, and is cov- 
ered in the bottom of the cell by the lower part of the last cast skin or 
pellicle, which also serves to line the rest of the cell and leave it clean 
for the formation of the pupa. Thus, when the young bee emerges the 
cell needs but to be brushed out by the workers to be ready to receive 
another egg, or stores of honey and pollen which are to form the winter 
food. 
Just before pupation, or when the larva has acquired full growth, 
the adult workers cover the cell with a convex lid, composed, not of wax 
alone, as in the case of the cappings of honey cells, but of pollen and 
wax combined. The larva just before pupation strengthens this cap 
by lining it with silk, which is also shghtly attached to the last cast 
skin. The pupa state lasts some twelve days, and on the twenty-first 
day from the time the egg was laid the perfect bee cuts a circular open- 
