106 Beekeeping 



water. Normally, they now abandon the work inside the 

 hive. It sometimes happens that a colony will contain 

 relatively too many young bees or too many old ones, these 

 conditions often arising in practical manipulations. If 

 there is a lack of young bees, the old ones act in their stead, 

 but they secrete wax slowly (p. 108) and do not produce 

 larval food adequately. If a colony is made up artificially 

 of young bees, some of them begin field work earlier than 

 normally. 



DIVISION OF LABOR 



From the preceding chapter, it is evident that there is a 

 definite division among the different members of a colony. 

 In a colony composed of perhaps 60,000 individuals, the 

 very existence of the bees depends on an orderly performance 

 of the various duties, and the development of colonial life, 

 therefore, rests on the evolution of some system for the 

 division of labor. The organization of the colony, already 

 described, shows one of the most marked cases of appor- 

 tionment of work, for the egg-laying is normally performed 

 by but one individual, the queen, while all the other females 

 (workers) are so constituted that egg-laying is not normal 

 and mating is impossible. The drones or males are so 

 specialized in function that they are probably useful to the 

 colony only in the mating of young queens. While the duty 

 of egg-laying devolves on the queen, the care of the brood falls 

 entirely to the workers. Since they must do work both 

 inside and outside the hive, there arises the further neces- 

 sity of a division 1 of these functions and this, as has been 

 stated, is based on the age of the individuals. 



1 The division of labor is as highly developed among bees as in any 

 insect community. Among certain species of ants, a greater diversity of 

 structure accompanies the performance of certain duties. For example, 

 there may be soldiers which serve only as protectors of the community 

 and there may be two types of workers, differing structurally and in their 

 duties. While structural differences do not occur in so marked a way, 

 the members of the bee colony are fully as greatly specialized in their labor 

 but the performance of specific duties is determined in some manner other 

 than by structure. 



