STINGING FOUR^WINGED INSECTS 
309 
T 
once prepared by the other bees for a fresh occupant. The 
newly born bee is at first moist, flabby, and pale-coloured ; 
but in a few hours her skin dries and hardens, when she at once 
commences her life-long labours, at first tending the young bees 
and doing other necessary duties in the hive, and then, a fort- 
night later, going forth with her companions to collect honey 
and pollen in the meadows and gardens. 
There is never room for more than one queen-bee in 
a hive ; and the queens, which may be recognised by their 
longer bodies and shorter wings, have such a mortal hatred 
of each other that, whenever two of them meet, they will 
fight, if permitted, until one is killed. But in summer, when 
young bees are hatching daily in large numbers, and the hive 
is getting over-populated, the workers do not permit the 
queens to fight; and finally one of them (usually the old 
queen in the first instance) works herself up into a great 
flurry, and rushes out of the hive, attended by several hundred 
followers, to seek for fresh fields and pastures new. This is 
called “swarming”; and a strong hive will often throw off as 
many as four or five swarms in the course of the summer. 
It is then the object of the bee-keeper to get the queen to 
enter a new hive, for otherwise the swarm may fly to a 
distance and be lost; but wherever the queen-bee takes up 
her abode, her companions will assemble round her, and at 
once commence the work of building combs and storing up 
honey. 
The drone, or male bee, is rather larger than the worker, 
and has a 
more o b- 
tuse body. 
He may be at once distinguished by his 
long thirteen-jointed antennae, or feelers, 
for the antennae are shorter and only 
twelve-jointed in the queen and worker. 
There are several hundred drones in a hive; 
but the queen only pairs once in her life, 
on the wing, and the ceremony is im- 
mediately followed by the death of the 
drone. The drones have no sting, for the 
sting of the female and worker is really a 
modified ovipositor, or egg-laying apparatus, 
analogous to the organ which is so con- 
spicuous in many ichneumons and other 
insects belonging to the same order as the 
bees. In the autumn the unfortunate drones 
are all massacred or else driven forth from 
the hive by the workers, when they speedily 
perish. The workers are by far the most 
numerous of the inhabitants of a bee-hive ; 
there may be many thousands of them, and 
their number appears to be only limited by 
the dimensions of the hive itself. 
Ph&U by if. Bentley'\ \^Shefield 
BUMBLE-BEE ON EVERLASTING-PEA 
Bumble-bees make their nests in the ground, and live in smaller communi- 
ties than the hive-bee 
L ' ' 
Fhota by W, P. Dando^ F.Z,S» 
HIVE-BEE 
(QUEENj WORKER5 AND DRONEj 
There are only about ten or twelnje kinds oj 
true hi've-bees knoivn 
