ON BEES AND HONEY. 159 



further consideration, proceeding to the more grateful subject 

 of the 



VVORKEK BEES. 



These constitute the great mass of the population, being, as 

 we have before hinted, unproductive or barren females. By 

 them all the varied labors of the hive are carried forward. 

 They are shorter and less in size than either the queen or the 

 drones. Taking the queen at one inch in length, which is 

 about right, the drone is two-thirds, and the worker one-half 

 an inch in length, The number of Working-bees in a healthy 

 hive, may be safely put at from twelve thousand to twenty or 

 thirty thousand. And in non-sWarming hiveS; (such as have been 

 in successful use by the writer, to which further reference will 

 be made,) there have been, beyond question, as many as for- 

 ty-five thousand to fifty thousand. When in such numbers, 

 and carefully attended to, in the matters of room and ventila- 

 TioN, the united labors of so numerous a body of workmen, or 

 rather work-bees, are productive of magnificent mountains of 

 high-piled sweets. The writer once owned a non-swarming 

 hive, which he kept in the garden of Samuel Gook, Esq., of 

 Salem, and which consisted of three collateral boxes. At the 

 end of the second season from its being tenanted by the bees, 

 each side box contained about forty-five pounds of honey. 

 Both these were taken away and there was left in the central 

 box, where the bees domiciled, fifty pounds for their winter 

 use. To return to the workers. They are all provided with 

 a flexible apparatus, called a proboscis, with which they lap 

 UP the honey, for they are a lapping, not a sucking in- 

 sect. Shakspeare to the contrary notwithstanding, who says 

 in the Tempest, — 



•' Where the bee sucks, there suck I." 



They also have, upon their thighs, small hollow baskets to 

 receive the farina and propolis which they gather, in great and 

 seemingly unnecessary quantities, from the flowers and th© 

 leaves. 



