BEE 



649 



BEE 



which are common to all bees, see the begin- 

 ning of this article; also, Bumblebee and Soli- 

 tary Bees, including Carpenter-Bee and Mason 

 Bee, following this section. 



Forms of Honeybees. The honeybees, like 

 the bumblebees, which with them make up the 

 so-called social* group as distinguished from 

 the solitary bees, consist not merely of males 

 and females. They include a third form as 



(a) The male; (b) the queen; (c) the worker, 

 or neuter. 



well, known as neuters, or workers, and it is 

 not possible to say that any one of the three 

 is most important. Most numerous and 

 smallest are the workers, which are but unde- 

 veloped females. These little creatures, about 

 half an inch in length, have some of the most 

 curious modifications of structures to fit them 

 for their work which are to be found in all the 

 insect world. For one thing, each worker has 

 a curious honey-bag which corresponds to a 

 bird's crop, in which the nectar is stored from 

 the time it is taken from the flower until the 

 bee reaches the hive. There it is forced out, 

 and placed in the cells or " combs," but in the 

 meantime something has happened to change 

 its flavois for honey has a distinctive taste, 

 different from that of the flower nectar. Just 

 what it is that the bees do to their burden 

 of nectar to give it the exquisite honey flavor, 

 no one baa ever been able to find out. The 

 worker has on its hind legs pollen baskets, 

 int.. uhi'h it thrusts the pollen stolen from 

 th< blossoms; it then transports it to th.- 1 

 Another remarkable feature consists of th. 

 glands for the secretion of wax and the wax 

 plates on which it is spread out and hardened. 

 The worker has a straight needle-like Mmr 



males are larger than the workers, and 

 their bodies are more hairy. Their eyes are 

 many times as large, and their wings are mm h 

 stronger, but they have none of the special 

 structures by which the workers are fitted for 

 their tasks, for the males do not work. Be- 

 cause of the characteristic deep bussing n< 

 which they make as they fly they are com- 



monly known as drones, and this has come to 

 be a term of reproach applied to any one who 

 is not willing to do his share of work in the 

 world. 



Longer than the workers or the males, but 

 slimmer than the latter, is the perfect female, 

 or queen. This royal name applied to her is 

 likely to give rise to the idea that the queen 

 is the ruler of the bees, but such is not the 

 case. She is the egg-laying female, and be- 

 cause the swarms could not increase without 

 her she is carefully looked after by the work- 

 ers, but she has no special privileges, nor is 

 one permitted to live in the hive when she is 

 not needed. Since each hive needs but one 

 queen, a second one that develops must either 

 find her way elsewhere, be stung to death by 

 the old queen, or be suffocated by the work- 

 ers. The queens, like the males, have no pol- 

 len baskets or wax pockets, but unlike the 

 males, they have stings, which are curved and 

 not straight like those of the workers. Since 

 the queen does not wander from the hive, 

 it is not her sting but that of the worker with 

 which many a stroller in country places has 

 been made unpleasantly familiar. 



The queen, it is believed by some authori- 

 ties, never uses her sting except against a 

 rival queen in the same hive, but the workers 

 protect themselves and the honey stores which 

 they are carrying home against other insects 

 and against birds. The wound is very painful, 

 owing in part to the backward-pointing stiff 

 hairs on the sting, in part to the poison which 

 is injected, and a sufficiently great number 

 of bees can actually sting to death a large 

 animal. Kipling in his Jungle Book tells how 

 the united efforts of the "bee people" turned 

 back the dingoes, or wild dogs, which were 

 sweeping over the jungle. 



Life in the Hive. Honeybees live in hut:. 

 colonies or societies, known as sicarms, win. h 

 consist of from 10,000 to 60,000 individuals. 

 In all this number th. re in but one full-grown 

 queen, and the males may number several 

 hundred, but with the coming on of the win- 

 ter season these are all stung to death by the 

 workers, who make up the great mass of the 

 B war ui. 



Construction of Comb. Well-ordered, indeed, 

 is the lit"- of tin- community. No bee ever tries 

 to assume the rights - of anoth 



bee, appan i r tries to escape its own 



duties. Just what part each has to play may 

 be best seen by a survey of the activities of 

 a swarm which has just found its home in 



