a 
THE ECONOMY OF THE HIVE ‘17 
posed to bring about the evolution. The worker 
bees being debarred from the stimulating food 
which conduces to the perfection of the queen 
are rendered physically incapable of mating with 
the drone, and therefore can never head.a colony. 
The worker bee can lay eggs, and does so at 
times, but these eggs produce drones only. 
This curious feature of reproduction without 
fecundation is known as parthenogenesis. 
‘The eggs laid by the queen hatch on the third 
day, and after passing through the larval and 
chrysalis stages peculiar to insects, the fully- 
developed bee hatches on the fifteenth or six- 
teenth day if it be a queen, on the twenty-first 
day if a worker, and on the twenty-fourth day if 
it be a drone. These dates are taken from thé 
time the egg is laid. 
A short survey has now been given of the life- 
history of the bee and of its anatomy. This 
account is sufficiently full for inclusion in a prac- 
tical manual, and now we will take the course of 
events which have place in a normal colony during 
a season’s working. By this means the following 
chapters will be readily understood and easily put 
into practice. 
Towards the end of February bees begin to 
move about more freely, and to shake off the 
lethargy of their winter semi-hibernation. The 
queen will begin to lay eggs, a tiny circle at 
first in the centre of the cluster, which rapidly, 
enlarges as the days grow longer and pollen 
B 
