256 THE LABOURING BEE NUMBER TO A HIVE. 



season, and having completed the duty of fecun- 

 dating the eggs, they are all to a unit, towards the 

 end of the same season, destroyed by their brethren 

 the working bees, and their carcasses dragged from 

 the hive. 



The MODE in which this execution is perpetrated 

 by the bees, is said to be by driving the victims from 

 their combs and weakening them by starvation, after 

 which they are finished by being bitten beneath 

 the roots of the wings. This carnage continues 

 during three or four days, and is seen in front of 

 the hives. Several bees at once seize upon a 

 drone ; he makes no resistance, and they do not 

 quit him until they have fulfilled nature's mission. 

 The assassins should be assisted in their work, and 

 a wooden spatula will serve the purpose. The life 

 of the drone *thus extends, upon the average, but 

 from April to August, or September. The drone 

 is particularly distinguished by the humming noise 

 which he makes in his flight. The number of them 

 in a hive, proportional to its size and to the number 

 of working bees, is from four to five hundred, to 

 upwards of a thousand. Keys says, in his Bee 

 Master's Farewell, that a good swarm of bees ought 

 to consist of a peck and half, or about thirty thou- 

 sand in number. Many jokes have passed on the 

 idea of measuring bees by the peck ; nor does the 

 correct tale of them by the thousand, appear a much 

 more feasible undertaking. 



The common mule, OR LABOURING BEE, is smaller 

 than the drone, and its most obvious distinction is its 

 complete snug covering, to nearly the extremity of the 

 tail, by its wings. Having no concern in generation, 



