A natomy of the Bee, 
35 
is sufficient to fertilize the queen. In the 
hives of common bees, it is a good plan to 
remove the drone comb, so as to diminish the 
number of drones if possible ; but it sometimes 
happens that the bees reconstruct, in the same 
place, combs of the same kind. The safest way 
would be to replace the drone comb with worker 
comb, which can be easily done by those who 
make use of the extractor. 
In the case of Italian bees, it is better to 
leave the drone comb alone, because the more 
Italians there are, the greater the chance of the 
common queens being fertilized by them. A 
common queen thus fertilized produces a cross 
breed which is more productive than the pure 
Italian. 
It is true that, while the drones are in the 
hive, they consume a large quantity of the 
honey collected by the workers ; but still, we 
have not noticed that those hives which hold 
most drones, provided the queen prospers, yield 
less than those which contain fewer of these 
gluttons ; for, though they do consume a great 
deal of food in the hive, they create consider- 
able warmth, a circumstance which enables a 
greater quantity of bees to go out in search of 
honey. 
