39 
The Colony and its Organization 
tural fitness and age. While an individual worker bee may 
live if forcibly isolated from its mates, it cannot reproduce 
itself, fails to care for itself adequately and soon dies. Most 
insects have the ability to hibernate in winter but the honey¬ 
bee seems to have lost that ability. Since at low tempera¬ 
tures the bee becomes numb and finally dies, it must have 
the ability to make its own environment, so far as tempera¬ 
ture is concerned. This makes a colony necessary in winter 
so that the bees may mutually and collectively warm each 
other. Efficiency, if not necessity, demands that the work 
of the colony be divided and such a division of labor tends to 
develop into a condition demanding the maintenance of the 
colony. The honeybee is further modified for the defense of 
the colony rather than of the individual. The barbed sting 
is used but once and is more effective because it is left behind 
while the former owner dies. Such a weapon of defense is of 
no service to the individual. 
Size of the colony. 
This varies according to the season, the smallest number 
being usually found at the close of the winter in the North, 
when the number may be reduced to 10,000 or even much 
less. At the height of the season, the number may reach 
70,000, and while a larger number may be possible it is unu¬ 
sual. Swarms sometimes issue which contain 35,000 individ¬ 
uals. Such numbers usually surprise the uninitiated. It is 
not, hovvever, necessary for bees to exist in such large numbers 
to constitute a colony. A mere handful of bees (perhaps 200) 
may constitute a small colony (usually called a nucleus *) and 
if favorable conditions were to continue such a nucleus would 
become a full-sized colony. 
TYPES OF INDIVIDUALS IN A COLONY 
A normal colony at the height of the summer season of 
activity is composed of three kinds of individuals, (1) the 
The unusually small colonies are known among beekeepers as "babv 
nuclei.” 
