106 
Beekeeping 
water. Normally, they now abandon the work inside the 
hive. It sometimes happens that a colony will contain 
relatively too many young bees or too many old ones, these 
conditions often arising in practical manipulations. If 
there is a lack of young bees, the old ones act in their stead, 
but they secrete wax slowly (p. 108) and do not produce 
larval food adequately. If a colony is made up artificially 
of young bees, some of them begin field work earlier than 
normally. 
DIVISION OF LABOR 
From the preceding chapter, it is evident that there is a 
definite division among the different members of a colony. 
In a colony composed of perhaps 60,000 individuals, the 
very existence of the bees depends on an orderly performance 
of the various duties, and the development of colonial life, 
therefore, rests on the evolution of some system for the 
division of labor. The organization of the colony, already 
described, shows one of the most marked cases of appor¬ 
tionment of work, for the egg-laying is normally performed 
by but one individual, the queen, while all the other females 
(workers) are so constituted that egg-laying is not normal 
and mating is impossible. The drones or males are so 
specialized in function that they are probably useful to the 
colony only in the mating of young queens. While the duty 
of egg-laying devolves on the queen, the care of the brood falls 
entirely to the workers. Since they must do work both 
inside and outside the hive, there arises the further neces¬ 
sity of a division 1 of these functions and this, as has been 
stated, is based on the age of the individuals. 
1 The division of labor is as highly developed among bees as in any 
insect community. Among certain species of ants, a greater diversity of 
structure accompanies the performance of certain duties. For example, 
there may be soldiers which serve only as protectors of the community 
and there may be two types of workers, differing structurally and in their 
duties. While structural differences do not occur in so marked a way, 
the members of the bee colony are fully as greatly specialized in their labor 
but the performance of specific duties is determined in some manner other 
than by structure. 
