52 
THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
with the workers, and especially to practise 
finding her when moving about among her 
subjects. One who can readily find a queen 
in a good lot of bees, has made a great stride 
toward the art of beekeeping. The queen 
possesses a sting, and pretty strong jaws. 
She has never been known to use her sting 
when handled, and seems to reserve this 
weapon solely for stinging and destroying 
rival queens. She does, however, bite pretty 
freely, and beginners handling a queen not 
'infrequently let her escape under the im- 
pression she is stinging when she is only 
biting. 
Worker bees also have stings, and use 
them freely on all enemies and intruders, and 
sometimes, I am sorry to say, on queen bees 
too. Workers attack strange bees which may 
enter their home, and sting them to death ; 
the}' will also attack and sting a strange queen 
and kill her or maim her for life, A worker, 
in stinging, generally leaves its sting in the 
wound, because the sting is barbed. As the 
sting is torn from the body of the bee using 
it, it takes with it the poison bag and other 
portions of the abdomen, which, sooner or 
later, causes the death of the bee. But this 
fact does not deter these valiant little crea- 
tures using it without further ado if their 
home is disturbed or their stores taken from 
them. Still, it often appears as if they were 
aware of the penalty of stinging, for many a 
bee starts with the full intention of attacking, 
but thinks better of it afterwards, unless it is 
attacked in return. Drones have no stings, 
and are quite harmless. Each kind of bee in 
a colony has its special duties. The queen 
has simply to lay eggs to keep up the popu- 
lation of the colony, and she is fed and 
attended to in every way by the workers, and 
seldom leaves the hive. The workers bring 
in honey, pollen and water, cluster and keep 
the cells warm where eggs are deposited, feed 
the young larva) when hatched from the egg, 
and then seal up and keep warm the cells in 
which they are until they have grown into 
young bees and eat their way out. They also 
hang in clusters and secrete wax for building 
the combs, act as scavengers and keep the hives 
clean, keep guard at the entrance to repel any 
intruders or bees from other hives intent on 
robbing. The drones do nothing hut “ loaf 
about” and eat up the stores gathered by the 
workers, and are of no use except when a 
new queen is reared, for securing her ferti- 
lisation. 
How long do bees live ? Queens live some- 
times as long as five or six years ; workers, in 
summer time, live only from six to eight 
weeks, but longer in winter — their length of 
life depending on the amount of work they 
do, and as they do less in winter than in 
summer, they consequently live longer. It is 
not known how long drones live, as they are 
usually killed off or turned out to die by the 
workers after swarming is over ; but when a 
colony has lost a queen, and under some other 
circumstances, the drones are not destroyed, 
and may live through a whole year or more. 
The development from the egg to the full 
grown bee is as follows : Three days after the 
queen deposits the egg in the cell it hatches — 
that is, the shell bursts and a small white 
worm is seen instead of the egg. This is fed 
by the nurse bees; it rapidly gets larger and 
becomes a large, fat grub, almost filling the 
cell, when in five or six days the bees seal the 
cell over with a cap made of wax and pollen 
mixed. In twelve more days, twenty-one 
days in all, the now fully grown young bee 
eats its way through the cap, and although it 
does not leave the hive for outdoor work, 
becomes at once a useful member of the 
household, and assists in the nursing. The 
beginner should make himself familiar with 
the appearances of a comb in wdiieh breeding 
is going on, and first of all note the difference 
between cells intended for rearing drones and 
those for workers — those for drones being 
much the largest. If measured it will be 
found that there are five worker cells in 
a row of one inch long, and only four drone 
cells. To see the eggs before they are three 
days old, the comb should be held so that good 
strong dayiight falls right into thecells, when 
a tiny oval white particle a little less in size 
than the egg of a blow fly will be seen attached 
to the bottom of many cells over some portion 
of the comb. If the eggs are over three days 
old they will have hatched , and the egg has 
developed into a larva), a small, worm-like 
grub, which a day or two later appears coiled 
at the bottom of the cell and swimming in a 
whitish, jelly-like fluid, which is the food 
given the larva) by the worker bees. A pieec 
of comb with eggs will also, as a rule, contain 
larvae of all ages, those nearly old enough to 
be sealed over being fat, white grubs, filling 
the cell almost to the brim. When these are 
sealed down they are left to develop without 
further help from the bees, except so far as the 
warmth of the hive is concerned. 
Chap. II. — a hive of bees, and how to 
MANAGE THEM. 
Assuming our “ beginner ” has obtained a 
hive of bees, and, from what has gone before, 
already knows something about the indi- 
viduals composing the colony or stock, their 
duties, functions, &c., the first question will 
be how and where should he place the hive. 
This is an important point, and there are 
some lessons connected with it that must be 
learned at once. First- — bees when first flying, 
