42 HOW TO KEEP BEES 



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and patted and petted by the nurses for some time 

 after it emerges from the pupa skin. But the 

 worker bee has to pat herself, and so she gives her 

 face a rubbing, stretches and tries to straighten out 

 her draggled clothing, and walks around trying to 

 get acquainted as best she can with her sisters, who 

 are too intent upon work to notice her. The first 

 twenty-four hours of her life as a bee are spent 

 orienting herself; but on the second day she learns 

 to put her head down into the cells of unsealed 

 honey and drink her fill. This is not a selfish and 

 thoughtless act, for almost immediately she enters 

 on her first duty, that of bee-nurse; and she must eat 

 pollen and honey and digest them in order to make 

 chyle for the bee brood, which she soon learns to 

 care for most solicitously. It may be her lot to 

 supply royal jelly to a queen cell and thus become 

 a lady-in-waiting. In any event she very soon learns 

 to be useful in many ways; she helps to build comb, 

 and works very hard at capping the cells of the young 

 bees when they are ready to pupate. She also helps 

 to clean house if necessary, carefully removing all 

 of the dirt and refuse at the bottom of the hive and 

 dumping it out of the front door. During the extreme 

 heat of the summer she must exert herself tremen- 

 dously by fanning with her wings so that a draft may 

 be set up in the hive for the sake of the bees as well 

 as to ripen the honey in the uncapped cells. During 

 very hot weather, when the bees hang out, some of 

 these young workers may be seen fanning "for dear 

 life" on the outside of the hive. Having more zeal 



