NOTES. 163 



tive disadvantage, for they consume quite a quantity of honey. The 

 drones are always killed off by the workers on the approach of cold 

 weather in the fall. Not unfrequently a drouth in the honey harvest 

 will impel the economical little workers to kill off, even in mid-sum- 

 summer, their useless "male protectors," — an instance of " Womens' 

 Rights," which I commend to the attention of all reformers. A skill- 

 ful bee-keeper, with his bees in movable comb-hives, can almost 

 entirely control the number of drones. Under all ordinary circum- 

 stances he can keep the brood chamber of hives almost free from comb 

 containing drone cells, in which case he will, of course, have very 

 few drones raised. He knows when, by his system of management, 

 drones will be needed, and can put frames of drone comb into the 

 centre of his best hives, and so secure the rearing of drones from the 

 best queens in his apiary, in time for the young queens who will need 

 their services. 



The eggs deposited by a fertilized queen in worker cells are impreg- 

 nated, and develop into worker bees. The workers are imperfectly 

 developed females. All the work of the hive is done by them. They 

 build comb, collect pollen and honey, take care of the queen, nurse 

 the growing brood, protect the hives from robber bees, and keep it 

 clean. Should the queen die or be taken from them, they will, if 

 they have worker eggs or worker larvse not more than three days old, 

 raise a new queen in the manner described in the chapter on Italian- 

 izing. If they lose the queen at a time when they have neither eggs 

 nor larva? the fate of the hive is sealed. Despair settles upon it. 

 The bees hang around in dejected idleness. If when in this despair- 

 ing mood some worker eggs or young larvae are given them, the bees 

 soon acquire an entirely different appearance. They seem joyfully to 

 recognize that now there is a chance for life. They construct queen 

 cells, nurse the young queens, and in due time will have another 

 mother. 



Bees usually construct several queen cells at the same time, nurse 

 the young queens, and at the proper time seal them up in cells to 

 undergo the final transformation into perfect insects. If the bees in- 

 tend to swarm, at some time before the first of the young queen bees 

 has hatched, on a fair day the old queen issues from the hive and a 

 partof the bees follow her in great apparent tumult. Usually the queen 

 alights on a shrub or tree near the hive, and all the bees who followed 

 her cluster around her. Here they remain from one to several hours, 

 when, unless previously hived by the bee-keeper, they fly off to the 

 woods, or to such other place as they may have chosen for their 

 future home. When the first queen hatches from the cells prepared 

 before the swarm issued, this young queen, unless prevented by the 

 workers, will proceed at once to destroy all the other young queens 



