OUR FRIENDS, THE BEES 
move. He picks up a handful and holds 
them up for the crowd to look at. If he 
has good nerves he can shake the hand- 
ful on top of his head and in the mean- 
time pick up another handful. 
YOUNG BEES AT WORK 
The first day after the young bee 
gnaws its way out of the cell it does 
little but crawl around; but about the 
next day it will be found dipping greed- 
so on for a week or more. 
the first day it wilf-also begin to look 
after the wants of the unsealed larve, 
and very soon assists in furnishing the 
milky food for them. While doing so 
a large amount of pollen is used, and it 
is supposed that this larval food is pollen 
and honey, partially digested by these 
young nurses. 
Bees of this age, or a little older, 
supply royal jelly for the queen-cells, 
which is the same, probably, as the food 
given very small larve. Just before 
they are sealed up, larve to produce 
worker-bees and drones are fed on a 
coarser, less perfectly digested mixture 
of honey and pollen. 
Young bees have a white, downy look 
until they are a full week old, and con- 
tinue a peculiar young aspect until they 
are quite two weeks old. At about this 
latter age they are generally active comb- 
builders of the hive. When a week or 
ten days old they take their first flight 
out of doors. We know no prettier sight 
in the apiary than a host of young Ital- 
ians taking a playspell in the open air in 
front of their hive. Their antics and 
gambols remind one of a lot of young 
lambs at play. 
It is also very interesting to see these 
little chaps bringing their first load of 
pollen from the fields. If there are 
plenty of other bees in the hive of the 
proper age, they will not usually take up 
this work until about two weeks old. 
The first load of pollen is to a young bee 
just about what the first pair of pants is 
to a boy-baby. 
Instead of going straight into the hive 
with its load, as the veterans do, a vast 
amount of circling round the entrance 
After about ~ 
679 
Photo from “A B Cand X Y Z of Bee Culture.” 
by A. I. and E. R. Root 
A LIVE. BEE HAT 
must be done; and even after the young 
bee has once alighted it takes wing again 
before rushing all through the hive, to 
jostle nurses, drones, and perhaps the 
queen, too, saying as plainly as could 
words, “Look! Here am I. I gathered 
this, all myself. Is it not nice?” 
We might imagine some old veteran, 
who had brought thousands of such 
loads, answering gruffly, “Well, suppose 
you did; what of it? You had better 
put it in a cell and start off after more, 
instead of making all this row and wast- 
ing time, when there are so many mouths 
to feed.” ae 
We said«we might imagine this, for 
we have never been able to find any indi- 
cation of unkindness inside a beehive. 
