64 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE- 



CHAPTER X. 



THE WORKING BEE. 



Working bees are the rank and file of the hive; the architects, 

 the builders, the preparers of building materials, the purveyors, 

 the cooks, the nurses, the inspectors of nuisances, the scavengers, 

 the sentinels and the defenders. All and every bee when at home 

 has to fulfil these and many other duties at some time during 

 her indoor life, from the day she escapes from the chrysalis t'll 

 she goes out to procure home supplies. 



"The working female," say Kerby and Spence, "is zealous for 

 the good of the community, a defender of public rights, enjoy- 

 ing an immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite, and the 

 pains of parturition, laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, 

 skilful ; incessantly engaged in the nurture of the young, in col- 

 lecting of honey and pollen, in elaborating wax, in constructing 

 cells and the like. Paying most respectful and assiduous atten- 

 tion to objects (queen bees), which, had her ovaries been de- 

 veloped, she would have hated and pursued with the most vindic- 

 tive fury till she had utterly destroyed them." 



Abroad they are foragers, collecting pollen to supply the 

 juveniles at home with bee bread, honey for winter stores, and 

 propolis to glue up cracks, and cementing foreign intruding sub- 

 stances that are too cumbersome to remove bodily or too tenacious 

 to be removed piecemeal. Abroad they are one of the great 

 fertilisers of the vegetable world. They are our forest makers, 

 our orchardists, our florists. As forest-makers, they perpetuate 

 the species of trees and' plants upon which they work. As fruit- 

 producers, they are constantly improving their form, their colour, 

 their flavour, and their season. As florists, they are ever varying 

 our flowers in shape, in perfume, in colour, in tint, in streak, 

 and in freckle. They are constantly reproducing odd colours and 

 fashionable combinations thereof, and suffusing them with the 

 most attractive shades to please the searcher for novelties in the 

 floral world. 



In the pages on queen-bees I named the workers as incom- 

 plete females; we now propose to follow the latter, watching the 



