INSECT LIFE 209 



whilst twelve midnight seems the highest, but it has 

 seldom been taken then. 



Clearly, to keep awake the bees need a high tem- 

 perature, and sleep or coma, unless speedily arrested, 

 for the worker bee means death. I have shown that 

 this is not always so with the drone, for, expelled the 

 hive, he does sometimes live through the winter like 

 a brimstone butterfly. My friend has never known 

 drones to live through the winter, but this occurs now 

 and then in hives which have lost their queen. At 

 first thought this may seem like a wise provision. Are 

 the bees keeping their drones so that they may requeen 

 the hive next season ? or have they taken steps to get 

 a new queen at once by nursing ordinary worker eggs 

 of not more than three days old on royal jelly, 

 and building a special cell about these treasures ? But 

 drones suffered to live on in the hive through autumn 

 and winter are not proof of such wisdom in the bees. 

 They are useless, worse than useless, for by dipping 

 into the honey stores they may merely serve to shorten 

 the life of the hive. It is because the worker bees 

 are demoralised by the loss of their queen that the 

 drones are spared. The glorious machinery of the 

 beehive has broken down. It is as if the bees lost 

 heart and head. The workers may struggle on to the 

 last (as I have seen them do when the terrible wax 

 moth has overcome them utterly), some even laying 

 eggs as if they were queens eggs that, by one of 

 Nature's startling ironies, produce nothing but drones ! 



