96 MAKE OF THE DRONE. 



The number of drones in a hive is very indefinite : in 

 some hives there are four or five hundred, in others from 

 eight hundred to a thousand. Their number, however, is 

 always in proportion to the fecundity of the queen and 

 the number of working bees. 



The drone has no offensive weapon like the working 

 bee : at the place where the sting of the latter presents 

 itself, is situated the orifice of the case which encloses the 

 organ of generation, destined to the fecundation of the eggs 

 of the queen. 



The antennae of the drones have eleven articulations, 

 whilst those of the common bee have fifteen. Their eyes, 

 constructed with the rete mirabile, cover the whole of the upper 

 part of the head, whereas the eye of the common bee forms 

 on each side a kind of oval. Their teeth are smaller than 

 those of the common bee, nor are they required for the same 

 purposes. Their proboscis is shorter and more slender, for 

 as they never gather any honey from the flowers, but live 

 entirely upon the stock of the hive, nature has simply fur- 

 nished them with the means of imbibing the honey from the 

 cells. Their proboscis would not be sufficiently long to 

 extract the juices from the nectarium of the flowers, which, 

 in some cases, lies at too great a depth, as in the case of red 

 clover, even for the proboscis of the common bee to reach. 

 The drone bee may be said to present the extraordinary 

 phenomenon in nature, of a creature arrived at full maturity, 

 and unable to procure the necessary means of its subsistence. 

 The drones have no triangular cavities on their legs, in which 

 to collect the farina ; in fact, they appear by nature to be 

 exempt from all kinds of labour, she having refused to them 

 every instrument requisite for it ; their life appears to be one 

 of luxury and amusement, their only occupation being the 

 fecundation of the eggs of the queen *, although it is asserted 



* In a work entitled, Praktische Oekonomische Abhandlung von der Bienen- 

 zucht, von Ladislaus Reichsedlen von Stoixner, printed at Nurnbur" in 1789 



