THE HONEY BEE FAMILY 43 



duce the wax and several pounds of honey are 

 digested for eacli pound of wax secreted. 

 Within a f ew^ hours the wax scales will be plen- 

 tiful and the bees will begin building the new 

 combs. Since the queen will need worker cells 

 for immediate use the first cells built will be 

 all of the worker size. If the queen is prolific 

 the bees may build the hive nearly full of 

 worker cells, but ordinarily it w^ill not be long 

 until the bees have more comb built than she 

 can occupy, so the bees begin to build drone 

 cells, which are larger and apparently easier 

 to construct. It often happens that a new 

 swarm which is allowed to build the combs with- 

 out interference will construct from one fourth 

 to three-fourths of the combs of drone cells. 

 Too much drone comb insures that the follow- 

 ing season large numbers of drones w^ill be 

 reared and that the colony can never be very 

 profitable. The drones not only require more 

 food, because of their larger size, but they add 



