THE DRONE AND HIS STORY 237 
the worker is ever ready with her sting, the queen 
uses if so rarely that many old experienced bee- 
keepers of the present time deny her altogether 
the power of stinging. A much more natural 
tendency with her is to bite; and when it comes 
to the use of the sharp, strong, sidelong jaws, the 
drone has a more redoubtable equipment than 
any, although he has apparently lost the will and 
sense to use it. 
Whatever the drone may have been in far-off 
ages, the worker-bees have him now well under 
the iron heel of matriarchal expediency ; and they 
see to it that he shall be fit only for the one in- 
dispensable office, although in that regard they 
exhaust every ingenuity to make him all that his 
kind should be. It is plain they would do without 
him altogether if that were possible. As it is, for 
nine months in the year there are no drones at all, 
and then only a few hundreds are raised in each 
hive—the bare minimum that will ensure the suc- 
cessful mating of the young queens when the 
summer sunshine calls them to their wooing. It 
might be. supposed that where there are com- 
paratively so few queens to be fertilised—only 
two or three at most from each hive, and these 
only once in a lifetime—that even those drones 
which are now tolerated are in excess of the 
number required. But a cardinal principle in bee- 
life is that the young queens shall choose their 
mates from another tribe, and so ensure a continual 
