12 BEE-KEEPING FOR PROFIT 
onlooker there is a certain amount of amuse- 
ment to watch this slaughter of the non- 
producers of the community: to see a couple of 
workers wrestling with the unwieldy drone, 
perhaps biting off one of his wings in the effort 
to disable him, before the finishing stroke 1s 
given. When, however, a bee-keeper sees the 
array of dead drones he will probably think it 
would have been better for him had they been 
workers—producers rather than consumers of 
honey. It is, of course, greatly to the advantage 
of a bee-keeper that the number of the drones 
should be kept down as low as possible. This 
can be done by giving the bees full sheets of 
bees- wax impressed completely with the basal 
forms of the natural worker cells, thus induc- 
ing them to confine their building to those cells 
only. 
We have already referred to the fact that 
a worker bee and a virgin queen are capable of 
producing eggs. The progeny of these eggs, 
however, although they may be produced in 
worker cells, are drones, fully developed, 
though smaller than those hatched in drone- 
cells. When this state of affairs is discovered in 
the hive the bee-keeper must ascertain by obser- 
vation whether it is the queen’s doings, and, if 
so, depose her and, if that of a fertile worker, 
