THE HONEYBEE 



71 



The colony in a hive usually consists of a queen, a few hundred 

 drones, or males, and several thousand imperfect females known 

 as workers. A prosperous colony may have 50,000 to 75,000 

 members. The division of labor is seen best in a hive in which 

 the bees have been living for some weeks. The queen, a virtual 

 prisoner, does nothing except lay eggs, sometimes as many as 

 fifteen hundred a day, and keeps this up, during the warm weather, 

 for from two to five years. Most of the eggs are fertilized by the 

 sperm cells of a male and develop into workers ; the unfertilized 

 eggs develop into males or drones. After a short existence in the 

 hive the drones are usually driven out by the workers. 



The cells of the comb are built by the workers out of wax 

 secreted from the under surface of their bodies. The wax is 

 cut off in thin plates by means of the wax shears between the 

 two last joints of the hind legs. The cells of the comb are made 

 in two layers, back to back, opening on opposite sides. They are 

 hexagonal in cross sec- 

 tion and are of differ- 

 ent sizes, the smaller 

 cells being used for 

 honey storage and for 

 the development of 

 the workers, the larger 

 cells for housing the 

 drones. The queen 

 lays one egg in each 

 cell, and the young are 

 hatched after three 

 days, to begin life as 

 white footless grubs. 

 For a few days they 

 are fed on partly di- 

 gested food called bee jelly, regurgitated * from the stomach of 

 the. youngest workers or nurses. Later they receive pollen and 



Hodge, Nature Study and Life, Chapter xiv. Bulletin No. 1, U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture, entitled The Honey Bee, by Frank Benton, and Farmers' Bulletin 447 

 on Bees, by E. F. Phillips, give useful information to the bee keeper. 

 1 Regurgitate (re-gur'ji-tat) : to cast out again from the stomach. 



Xuture Magazine 



Young queen bees sometimes rebel against the old 



queen, and leave the hive, followed by a large portion of 



the colony. In this picture, some of the " striking " bees 



are shown returning to their original home. 



