10 THE BOOK OF BEE-KEEPING. 



winter, and early spring, only two kinds populate the hive — the 

 queen and the worker bees, the drones having been expelled. 



23. Physiology of the Honey Bee. — A treatise on the 

 anatomy of the honey bee would be rather foreign to the present 

 volume, but some insight into the physiology will be found of 

 great service to the bee-keeper, as placing him in a position 

 to be able to support assertions which, without such a know- 

 ledge, would be almost an impossibility. This knowledge we 

 have often found of great service to us in our arguments with 

 the bee-keeper of, happily, bygone times. 



24. The Queen. — We will give a description, in the first 

 place, of the queen, or, more correctly speaking, the mother 

 bee. She is the only perfectly-developed female in the hive. 

 Her outward appearance is quite distinct from either a drone 

 or worker. She is much longer — her length, when in the height 

 of the egg-laying season, is about Jim. as against the length 

 of a worker about j4in. ; this length is principally caused by 

 the size and length of the abdomen. Her wings, although as 

 long as those of a worker, appear much shorter ; this is but an 

 optical delusion, caused by the contrast to the length of her 

 body. Her jaws are weaker, and her tongue much shorter, 

 than those of a worker. Her eyes, instead of meeting on top 



of the head, as a drone, are placed at the side, 

 having quite a space between the topmost edges 

 of each. Her two posterior legs are very broad, 

 but do not have any indentation on the surfaces, 

 or stiff hairs, which the worker has to form pollen 

 baskets. She has a sting, but differing from the 

 workers in its being curved scimitar-like, and 

 also possessing a less number of barbs. It is 

 quite a rare occurrence for a queen to use her 

 sting when handled ; in fact, only two isolated 

 The Queen. cases have come under our notice. Her legs 



and under portions of her body are much lighter- 

 coloured than the workers or drones. Upon dissection, we find 

 a still greater difference ; the two air sacs of the worker are 

 here partially displaced by two huge ovaries, communicating 

 with which are two tubes or ducts, terminating in a single one, 

 and thence to the outside of the queen's body ; these are called 

 oviducts, and form the channel whereby the egg is conveyed from 

 the ovaries into the cell, when laying. Situated just below the 

 junction of these two tubes, and communicating with the single 

 tube, is the spermatheca, or receptacle for the spermatozoa from 

 the drone at the time of impregnation. Leukart estimates that 

 the spermatheca of a bee is capable of holding 25,000,000 sper- 

 matozoa. As connection only takes place once in the queen's 

 life, it is necessary that there should be a receptacle to hold 

 a sufficient quantity of the seminal fluid of the drone to fertilise 



