34 HOW TO KEEP BEES 



egg fast to the bottom. When the honey season is 

 at its height, she works with great rapidity; some- 

 times she lays at the rate of six eggs per minute, often 

 laying three thousand or twice her own weight of 

 eggs per day. She is a wise queen, however, and 

 has in mind the dangers of overpopulation. When 

 there is much honey brought in, and the swarrffmg 

 season is at hand, she enlarges her empire rapidly; 

 but when there is little honey, she keeps the amount 

 of brood down to what can be cared for. Whether 

 this question of limiting the population is decided 

 by the queen, or whether she simply acts in response 

 to the food given her by the workers, is a question 

 not yet settled. However this may be, it is certain 

 that Malthusian doctrines are rigorously and suc- 

 cessfully practised by the perfect socialists of the 

 hive. 



Sometimes when the honey flow is very great an 

 intoxication of work seems to possess the colony. 

 The bees, coming in from the field, will drop the 

 honey anywhere, and the queen, agitated by the 

 general spirit of the hive, will drop her eggs every- 

 where; and the poor, overworked, bee housekeepers 

 have to pick up the honey and store it in the cells, 

 and pick up the eggs and glue them fast to the cell- 

 bottoms. 



THE DRONE (Plates V, VI, VII) 



Of all the denizens of the hive the lot of the drones 

 is the least enviable. That one may surely fulfil the 

 destiny as king father, many are born, only to be 



