294 THE LABOURING BEE NUMBER TO A HIVE. 



are mollified and worn away by the expansion and 

 culture of the reasoning faculty. The drones are 

 hatched at the beginning of the season, and having 

 completed the duty of fecundating the eggs, they are 

 all to a unit, towards the end of the same season, 

 destroyed by their brethren, the working bees, and 

 their carcases 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 ex- 

 tends, upon the average, but from April to August, 

 or September. The drone is particularly distin- 

 guished 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. 

 Key says, in his Bee Master's Farewell, that a good 

 swarm of bees ought to consist of a peck and a half, 

 or about thirty thousand 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 



