2 Bee-Keeping Simplified for tlie 



In the summer the honey bee community is made up of three 

 kinds — one queen, forty to fifty thousand workers, and a few 

 hundred drones. Fig. 1. 



The Queen is the most important bee in the hive, not 

 because she rules, which might be implied from her name, 

 but because she is a fully developed female, capable of 

 impregnation by the male, after which she can reproduce 



Fig. 1. 



either sex by laying eggs, which, at will, she either fertilises 

 with spermatozoa originally obtained from the drone and 

 stored in a little sac at the base of and inside her abdomen, or 

 she allows them to pass unfertilised. 



In size and appearance the egg is very like a fly-blow, 

 Fig. 2, left side. Enclosed within the shell is a yolk and 

 white as with the hen's egg. In the centre of the end. Fig. 2, 

 right side, is a little hole called the micropyle, through which 



Fig. 2. 



Uxe spermatozoon enters. The fertilised egg produces the 

 females (workers or queens), the unfertilised produce drones 

 only. 



Occasionally, under abnormal conditions of queenlessness, a 

 worker develops the power of laying eggs ; these are un- 

 fertilised, and produce oulj- males. 



In appearance the queen is quite different from the other 

 bees. The abdomen is more slender and tapering, the wings 



