SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 19 
are really females of a dwarfish size. They are imperfectly developed 
in size, and their female organs and propensities are in like manner 
imperfectly developed, except in some few instances. In consequence 
of a more perfect development than is usual, they have been known to 
lay drone eggs. That they are really females and not mongrels is 
proved by the fact that when a queen is lost or removed from the hive 
in the hatching season, a newly laid worker egg is taken from the cell 
in which it has been deposited and transferred into a queen cell, which 
is prepared for the purpose, and by a peculiar feed called royal jelly it 
becomes a perfectly developed queen or mother. j 
THE DRONE. ~ 
The drone, like the queen and worker, is appropriately named. He 
is larger, stouter and more bulky than the worker, and not so long as 
the queen. The drones are the only males in the hive. They are 
hatched from April to July, and usually number from three to four 
hundred in a single colony. They are literally “ gentlemen of leisure.” 
They add nothing to the stores of the family, perform no labor, and do 
not even gather their own food, but live on the labors of others. They 
seem designed merely for propagation. Their days are very limited. 
When the work of impregnating the queen is performed for the 
following season, they are destroyed by the workers, who seem intent 
on carrying out the principle that he that will not work shall not eat. 
This general slaughter of drones usually takes place during the month 
of August, sometimes a little earlier. Rarely do they live longer than 
four months. None of them are allowed to survive the winter. 
