June, 1921] 



BEEKEEPING FOR NEW HAMPSHIRE 



the various duties named above, these worker bees secrete wax, build comb, keep the 

 hive cleaned up, and incidentally generate the heat necessary for brood rearing and for 

 wintering. 



The drones, or male bees, are found in and about the hive during late spring and 

 summer. They vary in number from a few dozen to several hundred. They are larger 

 than the workers, with heavier bodies and without stings. Their sole purpose is to mate 

 with the young queens. Only one drone mateS with and fertiHzes a given queen, and 

 this only once in her life during flight in the air, about a week after emerging from the 

 cell. From then to mating a queen may lay for two or three seasons a total of two to 

 three million eggs._ The drone dies immediately after mating. The other several hun- 

 dred drones are raised at the expense of the colony during the summer. 



In the fall they are all driven from the hive by the workers, to starve and die. Their 

 numbefs should be kept down by using fuU sheets of worker foundation and by using 



Fig. 3. — The honey bee: a. 

 Egg; b, young larva; c, old 

 larva; a, pupa. Three times 

 natural size. 



i^-f^n 



Fig. 4. — Queen cells. Natu- 

 ral size. 



frames which contain a large percentage of drone cells only in extracting supers above 

 a queen excluder. 



We now continue our investigations on the inside of the hive. Giving the bees first 

 a few puffs of smoke at the hive entrance we pry off the cover gently and remove and 

 examine each frame in turn. The one or two outer frames on each side will probably 

 contain honey only. The frames in the center of the hive, where the temperature is 

 highest and evenest, will constitute the brood "nest," and the cells of these will be seen 

 to contain eggs, young bees (larvae) and sealed brood. ' On one of these brood frames 

 will be found the queen. She is larger than the worker bees, with longer abdomen, and 

 is of slimmer form than the drones and with shorter wings. If she is an ItaUan queen, 

 as a rule she will be more easily found than if a black queen, and she will not be much 

 disturbed. While we are watching her, she will most likely continue her egg laying, 

 curving her abdomen into an empty cell every few seconds and depositing therein on the 

 bottom a small cylindrical pearly-white egg. Often in the height of the honey flow a 

 queen will lay as many as 2000 to 3000 of these eggs each twenty-four hours. Most of 

 these will be laid in the worker cells, but eggs will also be laid in the drone ceOs wherever 

 patches of these have been built. In case the swarming impulse is on, we will also find 

 several long peanut-shaped queen cells pendant from the sides or bottoms of the combs. 

 The same kind of fertilized eggs is laid in these as in the worker cells; the difference in 

 development is mainly and perhaps whoUy due to the speciaUzed food, so-called "royal 

 jelly," fed the growing young queen or queen larva. 



All eggs require about three days to hatch, but the larvail feeding period varies for each 

 of the three kinds of bees. The pupating or transforming period also varies sUghtly. 



