BEE BUSINESS 43 



that is presented to view must seem to be 

 a sort of lost motion. There appears to 

 be quite a bit of aimless wandering 

 around. In a hive that is disturbed by 

 being opened for inspection, this is doubt- 

 less true, but even in a closed hive the bees 

 are constantly on the move, constantly 

 doing something for the welfare of the 

 colony and before we can understand 

 some of the strange things that we see, we 

 must know as much as possible about the 

 normal life of the bee. "We must know 

 what its functions are and how it per- 

 forms them before we can expect to keep 

 bees intelligently. 



I have mentioned before that there 

 are many races of bees. The common- 

 est of these is the German or black bee, 

 early imported into this country and long 

 since established in a wild form over most 

 of our states. Where bees are kept in 

 crude, old-fashioned hives they are nearly 

 always of this race either in a pure state 

 or in the form of "hybrids," crosses with 



