238 MARYLAND AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
business. There is no reason, however, why it should not be made the 
sole means of livelihood. There are in the United States today, many 
men who devote all of their time to their bees, and find it a remun- 
erative business. 
With the improvement of the modern movable frame hive, together 
with the perfecting of systems of management, and a sufficient knowl- 
edge of the business, gained by study and experience, the opportuni- 
ties of the specialist bee keeper, were never better than they are today. 
The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Dr. E. F. 
Phillips, in charge of Apiculture, Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Dept. 
of Agriculture, for valuable suggestions in the preparation of this 
bulletin and for the privilege of using many of the illustrations from 
Farmer’s Bulletin, No. 447. Acknowledgements are also made to the 
A. I. Root Co., Medina, Ohio, for the use of cuts for figures 6, 12, 21, 
and 23. 
BEE BEHAVIOR. 
Every normal colony of bees in the active season consists of three 
kinds of individuals, (fig. 1.) the queen, a variable number of drones, 
and several thousand workers. The queen is the only fully developed’ 
female in the hive, and is the mother of all of the other bees. The 
Fig. 1.—Worker, queen and drone. 
drones often number several hundred and are present in the hive at 
or near swarming time in largest number. Their sole function is to 
mate with the virgin queen. Towards fall the drones are destroyed by 
the workers, usually by being forced from the hive, where they die of 
starvation. The workers constitute the largest part of the colony, and 
in a good sized colony number 40,000 to 70,000. 
The workers are sexually undeveloped females. They perform all 
the labor of secreting wax and building comb, feeding the young, pro- 
tecting and cleaning the hive and gathering and storing honey and 
pollen. 
