130 The Honey-Makers 



he would do some great acl ; but it is only for his pleasure, 

 and to get him a stomach, and then returns he presently to 

 his cheer." 



Moffett uses the time-honored privilege of abusing the 

 drone, to whip, at the same time, his Roman Catholic 

 brethren. 



" Some have stings (as all true Bees have :) others again 

 are without a sting, as counterfeit and bastardly Bees, which 

 (even like the idle, sluggish, lither, and ravenous cloystered 

 Monks, thrice worse than theeves) you shall see to be 

 more gorbelHed, having larger throats, and bigger bodies, 

 yet neither excellent or markable, either for any good 

 behaviour and conditions, or gifts of the minde. Men 

 call them unprofitable cattle, and good for nothing, Fuci, 

 that is, Drones ; either because they would seem to be 

 labourers, when indeed they are not : or because that 

 under the colour and pretence of labour (for you shall 

 sometime have them to carry wax, and to be very busie 

 in forming and working Honey-combs,) they may eat up 

 a.11 the Honey." 



The ancients sometimes speak of the drone as if it 

 were not a bee at all, but some other insect that made its 

 nest with the bees. Some believed that it laid its own 

 eggs and made its own cells, using the hive only as a 

 convenient resting-place where it could get food at others' 

 expense. 



The following is Pliny's opinion of it : — 



'' The drones have no sting, and would seem to be a 

 kind of imperfect bee, formed the very last of all; the 

 expiring effort, as it were, of worn-out and exhausted old 

 age, a late and tardy offspring, and doomed, in a measure, 

 to be the slaves of the genuine bees. Hence it is that 

 the bees exercise over them a vigorous authority, compel 

 them to take the foremost rank in their labours, and if 



