THE PBACTICAL BEE QUIDBi 



3. The Occupants of the Hive. In the summer months the 

 hive of a prosperous colony of bees will be found, upon 

 examination, to contain a queen, from 30,000 to 60,000 workers, 

 and from 300 to 400 drones. 



% - 



Photo by J. G. Oiggtt. 



QUEEN. WORESE. DBONK 



Fig. 1. 



4. The Queen (Fig-, t) is not the sovereign ruler of the bee 

 kingdom, as her name might imply. She is neither daughter, 

 wife nor widow of a king. She is obedient rather than 

 commanding ; and yet a queen in her own right ; born to the 

 purple ; pre-eminent and distinguished above all others ; the 

 abundant mother, carrying in her prolific womb the creation 

 and hope of unnumbered millions of her race. Hers is the 

 longest life, extending to several years. Her very movements 

 are queenly, the stately pace among her children marking her 

 out to the observant as distinct from other occupants of the 

 hive. In size, and form, and colour she is unique ; longer, 

 more delicately moulded, darker in hue. Her mission is to 

 propagate ; and for that most holy office nature endows her 

 richly. Mated once for all, her strength, her life to it are 

 unceasingly devoted. Within the hours that make a day and 

 night 3,000 eggs from her teeming flanks may fall ; and this 

 prodigious labour will cease only with exhaustion of fecundity 

 or approach of death. (45). 



5. The Workers (Fig. i) are the smallest bees in the colony; 

 females, like the queen, but undeveloped. Theirs is a brief 

 life, full of toil, of work so incessant that in the full flow of 

 summer activity it yields to the pressure of exacting- duty ; and 

 within a few weeks they drop and die, sacrificed to the demands 

 of destiny, martyrs to the common good. If born in the 

 autumn months they can survive the winter time of rest, and 

 with the opening spring begin the work which unborn genera- 

 tions are to take up and carry to completion. Their responsi- 



The flgurea in brackets, thus (46), refer to the paragraphs bearing the uum- 

 berg indicated. 



