16 PROFITABLE BEE-KEEPINd 



common, but differ in many important particulars. 

 The drone or male bee is stingless, and is also 

 destitute of pollen baskets; while the queen, the 

 only fully developed female in the hive, possesses 

 a sting, and is also endowed with' a series of pro- 

 ductive organs. She alone of all the inmates of 

 the hive can perpetuate the race. The worker 

 bee is an undeveloped female, and it is this bee 

 which alone performs the whole of the work in 

 the bee kingdom. She it is who gathers the 

 honey, pollen, propolis and water, feeds the young! 

 larvae, builds the combs and protects the colony^ 

 from attack, finally dying in harness. 



A good queen will lay from two to three thou- 

 sand eggs per day during the height of the breed- 

 ing season, and she is usually at her best in her 

 second year. After this time she gradually fails, 

 and should be supplanted by a younger mother 

 bee. If left alone the bees will bften do this for 

 themselves, but the careful apiarist leaves nothing; 

 to chance, and elects to do it for them as a rule. 

 The queen is the centre round which the whole 

 prosperity of the colony revolves, and without 

 good young queens the best results cannot be 

 obtained. She is the mother of the whole of the 

 other inmates of the hive, and haCs the marvellous 

 ability of laying eggs which will produce at will 

 either drones or worker bees. The queen is abso- 

 lutely the same as a worker bee at birth, but is 

 reared in a special cell and is fed with' special 

 food, and it is this food alone which is sup- 



