BEE CULTURE. 281 



times a little earlier. Rarely do tliey live longer than four 

 months. None of them are allowed to survive the winter. 



The Worker. — The workers are so called because they perform 

 all the labor of the colony. They seem to have no other pro- 

 pensity except to labor in various ways and to accumulate stores 

 for the subsistence of the family ; and such is their propensity 

 in this direction, that they often accumulate much more than is 

 found needful for their own supplies, and are able and, I doubt 

 not, are willing to furnish a liberal quantum of honey to their 

 keeper to defray their necessary expenses, such as hoiise-rent 

 and the time which is bestowed upon them. They uniformly 

 pay better for a good tenement than for a poor one. They like 

 to work to advantage, and never like to be in debt, and if they 

 are, it is not so much their fault as that of the keeper, who fails 

 to place them in favorable circumstances, in which they can give 

 full scope to their natural instincts. Their industry is prover- 

 bial. Some are employed during the working season as senti- 

 nels, some in comb-building, some in gathering and storing up 

 honey, some in nursing or feeding the young, some in pasting 

 over, mason-like, the crevices and joints of the hive, some in 

 removing from the hive offending substances, and others, like 

 a kind of body guard, seem to bestow special attention upon the 

 queen. Whether the principle of the division of labor is strictly 

 adhered to by them, or separate classes of bees perform con- 

 stantly the same kind of labor, or whether they are employed 

 alternately or promiscuously in different departments of labor, 

 is a point which is not satisfactorily settled by any observations 

 or experiments which have hitherto been made. Their number 

 varies in different swarms, from twelve to forty thousand, ac- 

 cording to circumstances, the size of the hive or the degree of 

 prosperity which they enjoy. They are styled neuters, but are 

 really females of a dwarfish size. They are imperfectly devel- 

 oped in size, and their female organs and propensities are in 

 like manner imperfectly developed, except in some few instances. 

 In consequence of a more perfect development than is usual, 

 they have been known to lay drone eggs. That they are really 

 females and not mongrels is proved by the fact that when a 

 queen is lost or removed from the hive in the hatching season, 

 a newly laid worker egg is taken from the cell in which it has 



