BEE MANUAL. 41 



The queen is indispensable to the prosperity of the hive. 

 She is the only perfectly developed female, and lays all the 

 eggs, of which she can, on occasions, produce two to three 

 thousand in twenty-four hours. Without her the colony would 

 soon dwindle down and die out, or be attacked and killed for 

 the sake of its stores, as, after being deprived of their queen, 

 the workers generally (unless they are in a position to rear a 

 new one, as will be seen further on) lose the disposition to 

 defend themselves and their home. The queen is not provided 

 with the special organisation which enables the workers to 

 gather honey and pollen and to secrete wax. She is furnished 

 with a sting, which, however, she very rarely uses, except in 

 a struggle with a rival queen. When she has been once impreg- 

 nated, and has taken her place in a hive, she never leaves it 

 except to accompany a swarm. Her term of life may extend 



Fig. 4,— THE QTJEEH. 



to four years at least, and during that time she may lay many 

 hundreds of thousands of eggs ; but she is considered to be in 

 her prime in the second year, and is seldom very prolific after 

 the third. She can be easily distinguished from the other 

 bees, and be recognised even by the most inexperienced from 

 the following description :— Her body is not so bulky as that 

 of a drone, though longer ; it is considerably more tapering 

 than that of either drone or worker; her wings are 

 much shorter in proportion than those of the other bees ; the 

 under part of her body is of a lighter and the upper of a 

 darker colour than the worker's; her movements are 



