84 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
their pleasure excursions, having digested their dinners, are 
prepared for a new supply. 
Aristotle (‘‘ History of Animals,’’ Book IX, Chap. XI) 
speaks of the irregular and thick combs built by some colo- 
nies, and the superabundance of drones issuing from them. 
He describes their excursions as follows: 
“The drones, when they go abroad, rise into the air with a 
circular flight, as though to take violent exercise, and when they 
have taken enough, return home, and gorge themselves with 
honey.” 
“The drone,” says quaint old Butler (1609) ‘is a gross, sting- 
less bee, that spendeth his time in gluttony and idleness. For 
howsoever he brave it with his round velvet cap, his side gown, 
his full paunch, and his loud voice, yet is he but an idle compan- 
ion, living by the sweat of others’ brows. He worketh not at 
all, either at home or abroad; and yet spendeth as much as two 
laborers: you shall never find his maw without a drop of the 
purest nectar. In the heat of the day he flieth abroad, aloft and 
about, and that with no small noise, as though he would do some 
great act; but it is only for his pleasure, and to get him a stom- 
ach, and then returns he presently to his cheer.” 
191. The bee-keepers in Aristotle’s time were in the 
habit of destroying the 
excess of drones. They 
excluded them from the 
hive—when taking 
their accustomed airing 
—by contracting the 
entrances with a kind 
of basket work. Butler 
recommends a similar Fig. 33. 
trap, which he calls a ALLEY’3 DRONE-TRAP 
““drone-pot.”’ 
One of the modern inventions to destroy them is Alley’s 
drone-trap* improved by J. A. Batchelder; but it is much 
* The perforated zinc, used in drone-traps, which we think was invented by 
Collin, (‘‘Guide,’’ p. 3. Paris, 1865), is so cut, that neither queen or drone 
but only the worker hee can pass through its opening. 
