20 
MANUAL OF APICULTURE. 
to be able to control this opening so as to fertilize eggs or not as she 
wills at the time of depositing them. If fertilized they develop into 
workers or queens according to the character of the food given, the 
size and shape of the cell, etc. ; if unfertilized, into drones. The queen's 
life may extend over a period of four or five years, but three years is 
quite as long as any queen ought to be kept, unless a particularly valu- 
able one for breeding purposes and not easy to replace. Indeed, if 
full advantage be taken of her laying powers it will rarely be found 
profitable to retain a queen longer than two years. 
Upon the workers, which are undeveloped females, devolves all the 
labor of gathering honey, pollen, propolis, and bringing water, secret- 
ing wax, building combs, stopping up crevices in the hive, nursing the 
brood, and defending the hives. To enable them to do all this they 
are furnished with highly specialized organs. These will be more fully 
referred to in connection with the description of the products gathered 
and prepared by the workers. 
Fig. 6.— A, Head of queen, magnified ten times, showing smaller compound eyes at sides, and threo 
ocelli on vertex of head; m, jaw notch. B, head of drone, magnified ten times, showing larger com- 
pound eyes at sides, with three ocelli between ; n, jaw notch. (From Cheshire.) 
The drones, aside from contributing somewhat to the general warmth 
of the hive necessary to the development of the brood, seem to have 
no other office but that connected with reproduction. In the wild state 
colonies of bees are widely separated, being located wherever the 
swarms chance to have found hollow trees or rock cavities, hence the 
production of many drones has been provided for, so young queens 
flying out to mate will not run too many risks from bird and insect 
enemies, storms, etc. Mating in the hive would result in too continuous 
in-and-in breeding, producing loss of vigor. As we find it arranged, the 
most vigorous are the most likely to reproduce their species. 
At the time of the queen's mating there are in the hive neither eggs 
nor young larvae from which to rear another queen ; thus, should she be 
lost, no more fertilized eggs would be deposited, and the old workers 
gradually dying off without being replaced by young ones, the colony 
would become extinct in the course of a few months at most, or meet a 
