66 PHYSIOLOGY OF THK HONEY-BEE, 



The Worker-Bee. 



1 58. The workers are the smallest inhabitants of a bee- 

 hive, and compose the bulk of the pop- 

 ulation. A good swarm ought to contain 

 at least 20,000 ; and in large hives, strong 

 colonies which are not reduced by swarm- 

 ing, frequently number four or five times 

 as many during the height of the breeding 



Fig. 23. 



season. 



150. Their functions are varied. The young bees work 

 inside of the hive, prepare and distribute the food to the 

 larvse, take care of the queen, by brushing her with their 

 tongue, nurse her, maintain the heat of the hive, or renew 

 the air and evaporate the newly-gathered honey (249), by 

 ventilating (744). They clean the hive of dirt or debris, 

 close up all the cracks, and secrete the greater part of the 

 wax which is produced in the hive. 



The old bees may, if -necessary, do a part of the same 

 work; but, as we have seen, (39), old age renders some 

 unfit to prepare the food of the larvse. More alert than 

 the young bees, they do the outside work, gather honey 

 (246), pollen (263), and water (271), for the use of 

 the family, and propolis (236) to cement the cracl(:s.* 



160. " Dzierzon states it as a fact, that worker-bees attend 

 more exclusively to the domestic concerns of the colony in the 

 early period of life ; assuming the discharge of the more active 



•ITnber speaks of two kinds of workers : "One of these is, in general, destined 

 fertile elaboTatioji of wax, and its size is considerably enlarged when full of 

 lioiiey; the other immediately imparts what it has collected, to its companions; 

 its abdomen undergoes no sensible change, or it retains only the honey neces- 

 sary for its own subsistence. The particular fanctioi of the bees of this kind 

 is to take care of the young, for they arenot charged with provisioning the hive. 

 In opposition to the wax-workers, we shall call thera small bees, or nurses." 



"Although the e.xter .al difference be inconsiderable, this is not an imagin- 

 ary distiuctioii. Anatomical observations prove that the stomach is not the 



