150 ANIMAL LIFE 
smaller than the queens and drones, and the last two differ 
in the shape of the abdomen, or hind body, the abdomen of 
the queen being longer and more slender than that of the 
Fic. 88.—Honey-bee. a, drone or male; 2, worker or infertile female; c, queen or 
fertile female. 
male or drone. In a single community there is one queen, 
a few hundred drones, and ten to thirty thousand workers. 
The number of drones and workers varies at different 
times of the year, being smallest in winter. Each kind of 
individual has certain work or business to do for the whole 
community. The queen lays all the eggs from which new 
bees are born; that is, she is the mother of the entire 
community. The drones or males have simply to act as 
royal consorts; upon them depends the fertilization of the 
eggs. The workers undertake all the food-getting, the 
care of the young bees, the comb-building, the honey-mak- 
ing—all the industries with which we are more or less 
familiar that are carried on in the hive. And all the 
work done by the workers is strictly work for the whole 
community; in no case does the worker bee work for itself 
alone; it works for itself only in so far as it is a member 
of the community. 
How varied and elaborately perfected these industries 
are may be perceived from a brief account of the life his- 
tory of a bee community. The interior of the hollow in 
the bee-tree or of the hive is filled with “comb ”—that is, 
with wax molded into hexagonal cells and supports for 
these cells. The molding of these thousands of symmet- 
