16 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
distinction is now definitely ascertained to be one of 
age alone. The young bee upon quitting its cell takes 
upon it a share in the home labour—cleansing or 
ventilating the hive, secreting wax or constructing 
comb, sealing the cells or warming the eggs; or it 
becomes a nursing bee and supplies food as above 
described to the queen, the larve, and even the 
drones. It must attain the age of at least four and 
it may be ten days (for observations have as yet given 
no exacter limit) before it commences so much as 
sporting before the hive; and it is a few days later 
still—somewhere between ten and twenty from its 
birth—before it flies boldly abroad and engages in the 
task of honcy-gathering. 
Much that is very interesting might be added, if our 
limits permitted, in reference to several of these 
duties. The work of ventilation in hot weather is 
carried out by two detachments—the one stationed 
outside the flight-hole and driving in fresh air by 
fanning with their wings, and the other just within the 
hive, and expelling the foul air in a like mode. The 
process of wax-secretion is described further on under 
the chapter headed “Summer Management.” Another 
home occupation popularly ascribed to the workers— 
that of acting as sentinels—is now discarded as 
equally erroncous with that of serving as a guard to 
the queen; for as no bees are to be found at the 
entrance at the seasons when invasions are most likely 
to occur, it is a safe assumption that those so found in 
the summer time are there either as fanners or as a 
matter of personal choice. The adult workers—that 
is to say, those that have passed these few days 
