16 PROFITABLE BEE-KEEPING 
common, but differ in many important particulars. 
The drone or male bee is stingless, and is also 
destitute of pollen baskets; while the queen, the 
only fully developed female in the hive, possesses 
a sting, and is also endowed with a series of pro- 
ductive organs. She alone of all the inmates of 
the hive can perpetuate the race. Thé worker 
bee is an undeveloped female, and it is this bee 
which alone performs the whole of the work in 
the bee kingdom. She it is who gathers the 
honey, pollen, propolis and water, feeds the young 
larvee, builds the combs and protects the colony 
from attack, finally dying in harness. : 
A good queen will lay from two to three thou- 
sand eggs per day during the height of the breed- 
ing season, and she is usually at her best in her 
second year. After this time she gradually fails, 
and should be supplanted by a younger mother 
bee. If left alone the bees will often do this for 
themselves, but the careful apiarist leaves nothing 
to chance, and elects to do it for them as a rule. _ 
The queen is the centre round which the whole 
prosperity of the colony revolves, and without 
good young queens the best results cannot be 
obtained. She is the mother of the whole of the 
other inmates of the hive, and has the marvellous 
ability of laying eggs which will produce at will 
either drones or worker bees. The queen is abso- 
lutely the same as a worker bee.at birth, but is 
reared in a special cell and is fed with special 
food, and it is this food alone which is sup- 
