8 



enemieL, „„., ^^. , „hey also gather the pollen of flowers, which, 

 when mixed with honey and partially digested, is fed to the 

 young brood. The length of life of a worker bee varies very 

 much. Bees tha.t are employed to the fullest extent of their 

 powers in making wax and afterwards collecting honey, do 

 not live for more than six or eight weeks of the spring or 

 summer : the making of wax is a greater tax upon their strength 

 than any of their other numerous duties ; therefore the Uf e of a 

 bee can be much lengthened by providing it with ' ' comb foun- 

 dation " (32). Bees hatched in autumn may live for eight or 

 nine months, having neither to make wax nor to collect honey 

 until the following year. A worker bee is provided with 

 a barbed sting, which is used as a weapon of offence or 

 defence ; being barbed it cannot easily be withdrawn when 

 inserted in the flesh of a human being. Bees seldom sting 

 after feeding freely ; hence before handling bees they may 

 be quieted by making them feed (63) . Workers carry honey 

 in the "honey sac," and pollen on their hind legs. Fer- 

 tile workers are occasionally present in a hive, but their 

 presence is rarely noticed except when it is queenless ; it is 

 then indicated by the manner in which the eggs are deposited, 

 and more markedly by the peculiar appearance of the capped 

 drone cells ; the eggs will appear in groups or patches here and 

 there, instead of being regularly deposited, and several eggs 

 will be found in one cell. The capped cells containing drones 

 produced by a fertile worker present quite a distinct appear- 

 ance, owing to the eggs having been usually deposited in 

 worker cells, with the result that the cell is specially extended 

 to hold the drone. A fertile worker can only produce drones : 

 she should be got rid of at once : as she cannot be identified, 

 the best course to adopt is to remove the hive fifty yards or 

 more from its stand, then shake or brush all the bees off the 

 frames and out of the hive on to a sheet ; return all frames to 

 the hive, taking care that no bees enter it until it has 

 been replaced on its stand, to which all the bees except the 

 fertile worker will return. As she bad probably rarely left the 

 hive, she is unlikely to identify it, and would be killed if she 

 endeavours to enter another hive. The presence of an un- 

 mated queen is indicated by precisely similar symptoms ; 

 in her case all that is necessary is to pick her off and destroy 

 her, and re-queen the stock (158). Sometimes if a fertile 

 queen in a nucleus hive has not room enough for laying, she 

 will deposit more than one egg in a cell ; or she may act simi- 

 larly under exceptional conditions in an ordinary hive ; this 

 must not be mistaken for the work of a fertile worker. 



Drones (Fig. 2), or male bees, are hatched early in summer, 



at which period there may be several hun- 



8. Drones. dred in a hive, but only a few of them are 



apparently required as mates for the 



young queens. The drones lead an idle life ; the principal 



object of their existence is to fertilize young queens ; they also, 



to some extent, assist in keeping up' the temperature of the 



