282 



ENTOMOLOGY 



ings of Aristotle, 330 B. C., and Cato, about 200 B. C.) and actually 

 worshiped as a symbol of royalty by the ancient Egyptians, through 

 whose papyri and scarabs the honey bee may be traced back to the time 

 of Rameses I., or 1400 B. C. 



The honey bee, unlike domesticated animals, is so little dependent 

 upon man that it readily returns to a wild life. Under many dis- 

 tinct races, which are due largely to human intervention, Apis mel- 

 lifera is widely distributed over the earth. 



Castes. The species comprises three kinds of individuals: queen, 

 drone and worker (Fig. 284) . The workers are females with an atrophied 

 reproductive system. They constitute the vast majority in any colony 

 and are the only kind that is commonly seen out of doors. Upon the 

 industrious workers falls the burden of the labor; they build the comb, 



A B 



FIG. 284. The honey bee, Apis mellifera. 



A, queen; B, drone; C, worker. Natural size. 



nurse the young, gather food, clean and repair, the nest, guard it from 

 intruders, control larval development, expel the drones briefly, the 

 workers alone are responsible for the general management of the com- 

 munity. Though hibernating workers live eight or nine months, the 

 other workers live but from five to twelve weeks. 



The term, queen is, of course, a misnomer, for the government of 

 the hive is anything but monarchical. The chief duties of the queen, 

 or mother, are simply to lay eggs and to lead away a swarm. She is able 

 to deposit as many as 4,000 eggs in twenty-four hours. After a single 

 mating, the spermatozoa retain their vitality in the spermatheca of the 

 queen for three or four years the lifetime of a queen. The males, or 

 drones, apart from their occasional sexual usefulness, are of little or no 

 service, and their very name has become an expression for laziness. 



The Comb. Wax, of which the comb is built, is made from honey or 

 sugar, many pounds (twenty, according to Huber) of honey being re- 

 quired to make one pound of wax. The workers, gorged with nectar, 

 cling to one another in a dense heated mass until the white films of wax 



