106 THE bkb-keepbr's guide ; 



than those of the drones, and do not meet above. So the three 

 ocelli are situated above and between the compound eyes. The 

 queen's wings (Fig. 40) are relatively shorter than those of 

 either the workers or drones, for instead of attaining to the 

 end of the body, they reach but little beyond the third joint of 

 the abdomen. The queen, though she has the characteristic 

 posterior tibia and basal tarsus (Fig. 43, p) in respect to 

 breadth, has not the cavity and surrounding hairs which form 

 the pollen-baskets of the workers. The legs of the queen (Fig. 

 43) are large and strong, but, like her body, they have not the 

 pollen-gathering hairs which are so well marked in the worker. 

 The queen possesses a sting which is longer than that of the 

 worker, and resembles that of the bumble-bee in being curved 

 (Fig. 44, Ss), and that of the bumble-bees and wasps in having 

 few and short barbs — the little projections which point back 

 like the barb of a fish-hook, and which, in case of the workers, 

 prevent the withdrawing of the instrument, when once fairly 

 inserted. While there are seven quite prominent barbs on 

 each shaft of the worker's sting (Fig. 74), there are only three 

 on those of the queen, and these are very short. As in case of 

 the barbs of the worker's sting, so here, they are successively 

 shorter as we recede from the point of the weapon. Even 

 Aristotle discovered that a queen will rarely use her sting. I 

 have often tried to get a queen to sting me, but without suc- 

 cess. Neighbour gives three cases where queens used their 

 stings, in one of which she was disabled from farther egg- 

 laying. She stings with slight effect. The use of the queen's 

 sting is to dispatch a rival queen. The brain of the queen is 

 relatively small. We should expect this, as the queen's func- 

 tions are vegetative. So the worker, possessed of more intri- 

 cate functions, is much more highly organized. Figure 44 

 gives the relation of the viscera of the queen. 



Schiemenz and Schonfeld are unquestionably correct in 

 the belief that the queen, and the drones as well, are fed by 

 the workers, the same food that the larvas are fed. Thus, the 

 digestion is performed for both queen and drones. 



I have known queens to lay over 3,000 eggs a day. These 

 I find weigh .3900 grams, while the queen only weighs .2299 

 grams. Thus, the queen may lay daily nearly double her own 



