AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



557 



BEES — DKOJiE, QUEEN, WORKER. 



I will take it for granted that you all 

 know what bees are, but I will describe 

 the inmates of the hive clearly, so that 

 you may better understand. 



In the summer season there are three 

 different kinds of bees that occupy the 

 hive of a populous colony, namely : the 

 queen, drones, and workers. (But us- 

 ually at the close of the honey season 

 the drones are killed or driven away 

 from the stores of the hive to die.) 



I will describe the drone first. This 

 is the male bee, and for no other pur- 

 pose than to fertilize the queens, with 

 one little exception that I might here 

 add, and that is, if there are several 

 hundred of them in a hive after it has 

 cast a swarm, or made weak from any 

 other cause, the drones serve as a 

 " stove" to keep up the proper heat on 

 cool nights, which keeps the brood from 

 suffering. 



The drone is the largest bee in the 

 hive. He wears coarse male attire, large 

 broad wings, and can be distinguished 

 by his size, shape, and by the coarse 

 sound of his wings in the air. I think 

 now you will be able to pick out the 

 drones. 



Next I will describe the queen. This 

 name (queen) was given her before bee- 

 keeping had advanced to a better under- 

 standing of the nature and habits of the 

 wonderful bees. Her name proper is 

 " mother-bee," as she is the mother of 

 everything in the hive except herself, 

 and some other (queen) mother-bee is 

 her mother. This is the case where she 

 has occupied the hive two or three 

 months during the working season. 



A queen may be the only mother-bee 

 in the hive, and, after all, not be a 

 mother-bee of anything. She may be 

 a virgin, or a young queen from one to 

 15 days old, that has never mated with 

 a drone, and will not become a mother 

 of queens and workers until she mates 

 with a drone, but she may lay, all her 

 eggs producing drones. This I will ex- 

 plain further on. 



The queen has a body resembling a 

 wasp, except she is not so slim at her 

 waist, and the slim joint that connects 

 her foreparts to her hindparts is shorter 

 than that of the wasp. Her wings are 

 the same size, as nearly as I can judge, as 

 the wings of a worker-bee. Her body is 

 about one-third longer than a worker's 

 body, and her face, head and legs are 

 different. This gives her a different ap- 

 pearance from any other bee in the hive. 

 She is often hard to find by an inexperi- 

 enced person because one bee among so 



many others is hard to find even if she 

 does look differently, as there is only 

 one queen in the hive, with some excep- 

 tions, which will be explained further on. 



Now I believe, if you are going to 

 make a bee-keeper, you can find the 

 queen. 



Last, least, and easily found and 

 learned, are the workers. There are 

 usually from 20,000 to 60,000 of these 

 bees to a populous colony, so they are 

 not hard to find, and with the little 

 "thorns" in their tails, inexperienced 

 bee-keepers sometimes quickly find out 

 which is the worker and "biter" bees, 

 without any one telling them. But I 

 will here say that the fear of bee-stings 

 usually disappears when the nature and 

 habits of the bees are known. You 

 should bear in mind that you would be 

 afraid of a horse, until you learned 

 something of his nature and habits. 



Now I have made known to you, as 

 best I know how on paper, the three 

 different kinds of bees that occupy a 

 hive. I will now begin with you with a 

 full colony of bees, as I cannot well 

 teach you properly unless you have, or 

 soon get, some bees. So I had better 

 tell you how to get the bees, then go on 

 with the manipulation, etc. 



GETTING YOUR FIRST BEES. 



If there is no practical bee-keeper in 

 your neighborhood that has bees in 

 movable-comb hives (I used the word 

 " practical," as representing one using 

 frame or movable-comb hives, for one 

 cannot practice much unless the bees 

 are on movable combs, as a person must 

 see the inside of the hive to get much 

 practice in bee-keeping), I would get a 

 box-hive of bees, and transfer them into 

 some hive that bee-keepers use who are 

 making a success in producing honey — 

 the Simplicity 8 or 10 frame hive, or 

 any good hive that you can get the 

 cheapest and handiest. 



HAULING AND TRANSFERRING BEES. 



I would get bees already in a movable- 

 comb hive if I could, unless you wish 

 the transferring experience, which you 

 ought to have, and must have, to get 

 along well, as no bee-keeper of long 

 standing can get along without trans- 

 ferring some combs, as the contents of 

 a hive may melt down, or be knocked 

 over, etc., and it will have to be trans- 

 ferred. So I will start you out after a 

 box-hive of bees. This you can engage 

 of a neighbor, and have a time set to go 

 for it; and if you do not wish any racket 

 on the road, you had better load up and 



