BEES, WASPS, ANTS, ETC. 



543 



years. On account of the value of its two main products, honey and wax, it has been 

 domesticated by man, and the methods of bee-culture in use admit of ready study of 

 its economy. Remarkable facts in its life history have been discovered, and are sig- 

 nificant as indicating the possible results of an equally close study of the life history 

 of other higher Hymenoptera. The life round has been briefly summed up as follows : 

 "A fertilized queen, which, with a few workers, has wintered over, lays its eggs in the 

 spring, first in the worker, and afterwards, at a later period, in the drone cells (both 

 arranged in two perpendicular rows of cells). Early in the summer the workers con- 

 struct the larger flask-shaped queen-cells, which are placed on the edge of the comb, 

 and in these the queen larvse are fed with rich and choice nourishment. As soon as 

 the first of the new brood of queens has been excluded from its cell, which it indicates 

 by a peculiar buzzing noise, the old queen deserts the nest, carrying away with her a 

 part of the swarm, and this forms a new colony. The recently excluded queen then 

 takes its marriage flight high in the air with a drone, and on its return undertakes the 

 management of the hive and the duty of laying eggs. When another queen is dis- 

 closed, the same process of forming a new colony goes on. "When the supply of new 



Fig. 665. — QueeE, worker, and drone of AjJis meUifica, lioney bee. 



queens is exhausted, the workers fall upon the drones and destroy them without mercy. 

 The first brood of workers lives about six weeks in summer, and then gives way 

 to a new brood. Mr. J. G. Desborough stales that the maximum period of the life of 

 a worker is eight months. The queens are known to live five years, and during their 

 whole life lay more than a million eggs. (V. Berlisc-h). Laugstrotli states that 

 'during the height of the breeding season she will often, under favoi'able circum- 

 stances, lay from two thousand to three thousand eggs a day.' According to Von 

 Siebold's discovery only the queens' and workers' eggs are fertilized by sf)erm cells 

 stored in the receptaculuui seminis, and these she can fertilize at will, retaining the 

 power for four or five years, as the muscles guarding the duct leading from this sperm- 

 bag are subject to her will. Drone eggs are laid by unfertilized queen bees, and 

 in some eases even by worker-bees." When, from any cause, the supply of queen 

 eggs runs short, a worker egg is transferred by the workers into a queen cell. There, 

 either by the increased temperature of the cell, or by the larger quantity of food 

 given the larva, or by the superior quality of this food, the egg produces a queen bee 

 instead of the worker which would have come forth under ordinary circumstances. 



The cells from which the drones or males are to be developed are slightly larger 

 than the ordinary worker cells, as are also the cells devoted to the storing of honey. 



