52 BEEKEEPING 



realize that the job she has ahead of her is 

 a tremendous one. 



Another curious thing about the queen 

 is that she can at will lay two kinds of 

 eggs — either fertile ones, which produce 

 workers, or infertile ones that can develop 

 only into drones. These are laid in dis- 

 tinctive sized cells, the ones in which 

 drones are produced being much larger 

 than the ordinary worker cells. The fer- 

 tile eggs can by proper attention on the 

 part of the bees be developed, not into 

 workers but into new queens. In this way, 

 from one queen we get two types of eggs 

 that may produce three types of indi- 

 viduals. 



It is only the queens and the workers 

 that are equipped with those efficient lit- 

 tle hypodermic needles known as stings, 

 thus showing that Kipling was absolutely 

 correct in what he had to say about the 

 female of the species — at least so far as 

 the bee is concerned. The queen, how- 

 ever, will very rarely resort to the use of 



