i6 Bee-keeping for Beginners. 



They make the wax, build the comb, gather all the 

 honey and the pollen by day, and store it by night. 

 They never seem to sleep, though they have been 

 watched at all hours in observatory hives. 



Working bees are undeveloped females, as it has 

 been proved beyond doubt that workers and queens 

 are produced from the same eggs treated in different 

 ways. This is one of the mysteries of Nature, at 

 present wholly unknown. Besides doing all the work, 

 they defend their stores when collected by means of 

 their stings. The ingenuity of man has, however, 

 caused bees to be harmless in this respect, and they 

 can be so completely subdued by means of a little 

 smoke or carbolic acid, that they can be treated as 

 flies. 



The drones seem to be the most unfortunate 

 creatures in the hive. They are called into existence 

 in the spring for certain purposes, the principal of 

 which is the fertilization of the queens. Those that 

 are chosen by the queens lose their life on their 

 wedding tour, as intimated before, while those that 

 are not required for that purpose are suffered by the 

 workers to exist till August or September, and ^\'hen 

 it is certain that the queens do not require their 

 services any longer, they are turned out of the hives 

 and miserably destroyed by the bees themselves. 

 Though the drones are so much larger than the 

 workers, they are no match for them in a fight. They 

 are not only few in numbers, but they have no sting, 



