250 



ZOOLOGY 



It is by means of these egg-producing females that the brood is 

 started the following year, as stated on the preceding page. 



The Honeybee. — The 

 most wonderful commu- 

 nal life is seen, however, 

 among the honeybees. 

 Their daily life may be 

 easily watched in the 

 schoolroom, by means of 

 one of the many good 

 and cheap observation 

 hives now made to be 

 placed in a window 

 frame. ^ 



The honeybee in a 

 wild state makes its 

 home in a hollow tree; 

 hence the term bee tree. 

 In the hive the colony 

 usually consists of a 

 queen, or egg-laying 

 female, a few hundred 

 drones, or males, and 

 several thousand work- 

 ing females, or workers. 

 The colonies vary greatly 

 in numbers. In a wild 

 state there are fewer making up the colony. The division of labor 

 is well seen in a hive in which the bees have been living for some 

 weeks. The queen does nothing except lay eggs, sometimes laying 

 three thousand eggs a day and keeping this up, during the warm 

 weather, for several years. She may lay one million eggs during 

 her life. She does not, as is popularly believed, rule the hive, but 



Nests of solitary wasps on an apple leaf. From 

 photograph by Overton, 



^ Directions for making a small observation hive for school work can be found 

 in Hodge, Nature Study and Life, Chap. XIV. Bulletin No. 1, U.S. Department 

 of Agriculture, entitled The Honey Bee, bj^ Frank Benton, is valuable for the ama- 

 teur bee keeper. It may be obtained for twenty-five cents from the Superintendent 

 of Documents, Union Building, Washington, D.C. 



