The Honey Bee and the Fly 365 



mentioned, takes place. By the ninth or tenth day she is busy laying 

 eggs. The number of eggs laid, or at least the rapidity with which 

 eggs are laid, is determined by the amount of food the workers bring 

 home. More eggs are laid when more food is obtained. 



The workers, when young, act as nurse maids for a week or two 

 before taking up the regular duties of gathering food. Some of these 

 also defend the hive against outside attacks, clean the hive, and even 

 go scouting to find suitable new quarters before swarming. 



^he workers really work themselves to death, and probably live 

 only some five or six weeks. New ones are being hatched continually 

 to keep the normal number of bees in the hive. Those which hatch in 

 the fall may live five or six months. 



If a queen should die, any one of the workers may with proper 

 feeding, be able to develop and lay eggs, but in such cases the new queen 

 would not have had the nuptial-flight, and therefore no eggs would be 

 fertile. Consequently drones alone are hatched from the eggs. 



Drones hatch in the same way that queens and workers do, but take 

 no part in the work of the hive. One of them alone acts as queen- 

 consort. As soon as food is scarce, they are starved to death and their 

 dead bodies are removed with the remaining debris. At such a time 

 even the drone pupae, larvae, and eggs are destroyed. 



As new bees are constantly being hatched, the hive may become 

 overcrowded. When this occurs, it is the old queen which collects 

 several thousands bees about her and goes through a complicated prepa- 

 ration to start a new colony. Scouts are sent out to seek a fitting loca- 

 tion, and after first settling on a tree-branch or other object in a very 

 dense cluster, the whole colony takes up its new abode. 



The cells in the hive are made of wax. Those which are to have 

 eggs placed in them, are hexagonal in shape, although a careful exami- 

 nation will show they all vary slightly from one another. The cells 

 which are to contain honey, are rounded. 



The wax is produced by a secretion from the smooth paired patches 

 on the ventral surface of the abdominal metameres, called wax-glands. 

 The process gone through is as follows : The bees gorge themselves 

 with honey. Great clusters of such bees then hang from the top of the 

 hive for several hours, and thin scales of wax form on the plates. These 

 scales of wax are then removed by the hind legs, while the fore-legs 

 transport the wax to the mouth. Here the wax scales are mixed with 

 saliva and kneaded by the mandibles. The wax is then ready either to 

 repair old cells or build new ones. 



The cells may be built especially for honey or for breeding, but 

 often drone cells, even when the cocoon is still present, are used for 

 honey cells. However, cells made especially for honey have the open- 

 ings somewhat above their bases so that the honey will not run out 



