Life History and Structure of the Bee. 15 



male organ to be torn off, and this remains with the 

 queen. The poor drone falls to the ground dead, 

 while the happy queen flies home to her hive, never 

 again to leave it except with a swarm. Copulation 

 only takes place once. It sometimes happens that 

 from one cause or another the queen does not arrive 

 safely home, or goes into the wrong hive and is killed. 

 To prevent the latter, hives should not be placed too 

 closely together, or, if they are, should be painted 

 different colours. It is well known that bees can 

 distinguish colours, and it is certain they are fond of 

 blue flowers, as they will often go into them when 

 there is not a particle of nectar there. In the height 

 of summer a queen bee will lay as many as 2000 eggs 

 a day. A queen bee can lay drone eggs or worker 

 eggs at will. If a queen is not mated, it can lay eggs, 

 but these only produce drones. 



The ordinary working bees are twenty-one days 

 hatching out, and their span of life is from six to nine 

 months. Probably most of them die long before the 

 end of nine months from one cause or another. The 

 limit of their existence has been ascertained by intro- 

 ducing foreign (mostly Italian) queens after their own 

 queen has been withdrawn. In such cases not one of 

 the old bees has been left nine months after the 

 introduction of the new queen. The working bees are 

 smaller than either the queens or the drones, and, as 

 their name denotes, they do all the work of the hive, 

 and they do it with a zeal that baffles all description.^ 



