NATUKAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY BEE. 5 



pupa emerges from its cell a perfect worker. It gnaws through 

 the capping of its cell, never receiving the slightest assistance 

 from the other bees in the hive. So infinitesimally thin is the 

 cocoon left behind in the cell, that it takes many dozens of 

 them to make any appreciable difference in the size of the 

 cell ; and therefore we may allow the same combs to be used 

 for brood for a dozen years, without fear that the bees produced 

 in such combs vrill be smaller than those reared in new 

 ones. 



The work of the young bees is to feed the brood, whUe the 

 old bees are thus enabled to use all their energies in gathering 

 honey. This is a very important point to remember, and we 

 should always give a swarm of bees one or two combs of brood, 

 in all stages of development, from the parent hive or some 

 other, as but for this no young bees would be hatched out till 

 twenty-one days after the swarm was hived, thus obliging 

 some of the old bees to be always at home, while they might 

 otherwise be gathering honey. 



The young bees do not go out to gatlier honey till they are 

 some ten days old or more. A young bee is easily distinguished 

 from an old one by the merest tyro, as it is much lighter in 

 colour and of a soft and downy appearance. 



When a worker bee is hatched in the height of the honey 

 harvest, it rarely lives more than six or seven weeks; it 

 literally dies of overwork. Those hatched later — towards the 

 close' of the honey-flow — ^mostly survive the winter, and live 

 till the beginning of the summer. In queenless hives the bees 

 often live for twelve months, as they do but little work. 



Drones. 



Drones pass through the same changes as workers, but 

 they do not hatch out till twenty-four or twenty-five days after 

 the laying of the egg. As I have previously mentioned, the 

 drones are reared in larger cells than the workers ; but if the 

 bee-keeper prevents the bees from buUding any drone comb, 

 the queen will deposit drone eggs in worker cells, and the 

 drones reared in such cells will be much smaller than those 

 reared in full-sized cells. Should a queen mate with one of 

 these small-sized drones, the progeny must necessarily be very 

 small and inferior ; and therefore the bee-keeper should make it 

 a rule to have a piece of drone comb at least six inches square 

 in every one of his hives. The oappings on drone brood are 



