NATURAL HISTOEY OF THE HONEY BEE. 3 



These consist of long hairs, in which the bees carry the 

 pollen which they collect from the flowers. A bee never 

 gathers pollen from more than one kind of flower in a single 

 ioiu'ney, and it is owing to this wonderful provision of nature 

 that we do not have the pollen of one species of flower wasted 

 by being cai-ried to another species which it could not fertilize. 



Honey comb, as most people know, is composed of small 

 hexagonal or six-sided cells. In these the honey is stored and 

 the brood reared. The queen deposits one egg in the bottom of 

 each empty cell. She lays two kinds of eggs : one kind, which 

 she lays in the small-sized cells, produces the worker bees ; and 

 the other kind, which she deposits in the larger cells, produces 

 the drone bees. The queens, as we shall presently see, are also 

 produced from worker eggs placed in acorn-shaped cells, and 

 supplied with different food — the same eggs precisely as, under 

 different conditions, would produce worker bees. 



If we examine the combs in a hive, we shall find that they 

 are chiefly composed of the small cells, five of which measure 

 an inch across : these worker combs are about ^ inch in 

 thickness. In the drone comb — i.e., that composed of the 

 larger cells — only four cells go to the inch. This drone comb 

 is found principally at the sides of the hives, and is usually 

 built when honey is coming in in large quantities, as it 

 requires less beeswax for its construction. It measures about 

 1| inch in thickness. A swarm of bees when left to itself 

 usually clusters in the highest part of the hive, and there 

 builds about four or five worker combs. When these are 



Fig. 3.— Newly Built Comb. 



nearing completion, which will probably be in ten days or a 

 fortnight, the bees commence to build other combs at the sides 

 of them, and these are generally composed of drone cells. 

 Honey is stored in both worker and drone combs. 



Let us carefully watch a swarm of bees, and we shall learn 



