6 
A B C OF BEEKEEPING 
of Apis mellifica, the bees used this sub¬ 
stance in front of the hive to contract the 
entrance in order to keep out other insects 
and rodents, hence the name, in front of 
the city, or propolis. 
Worker bees naturally fall into two divi¬ 
sions-—young bees for taking care of young 
brood, building comb, protecting the en¬ 
trance against robbers, and in other ways 
performing the inside work of the hive. 
The older bees, or “fielders,” are those that 
gather the nectar, pollen, and bee glue. 
When there are few or no young bees the 
older ones can and do assume the duties of 
nurse bees. See Brood. 
The fully developed, or true female, is 
what is called the “queen.” As already 
stated, she functionally is much the same 
as the workers with this difference: Her 
mouth parts, pollen-gathering apparatus, as 
well as her sting, are atrophied or aborted, 
while' her ovaries are highly developed. 
She is capable of laying as many as 5,000 
eggs in a day, but usually 3,000 is the limit. 
During the height of the season she will 
not average, probably, over 1,000 eggs a 
day. At the close of the active season her 
egg-laying diminishes greatly, sometimes 
stopping'mltogether. This seems to be a wise 
provision in nature to prevent the rearing 
of a lot of useless consumers that would 
simply use up all the stores before winter 
comes on. Along in the fall, if there should 
be a fall flow, egg-laying will start again, 
and a lot of young bees will be reared to 
make up a colony that will go into winter 
quarters. The bees that gather the crop 
during an active honey season very seldom, 
if ever, live to go into winter quarters. The 
fruit of their toil goes to their successors. 
Only one queen bee, under normal condi¬ 
tions, is allowed in the hive at a time. The 
worker bees, apparently, are willing to tol¬ 
erate one or more queens ; but evidently the 
queens themselves are jealous of each other, 
and, when they meet, a mortal combat fol¬ 
lows, during which one of them receives a 
fatal sting. The reigning queen bee, then, 
is often the survival of the fittest. Some¬ 
times mother and daughter will get along 
very nicely together and perhaps even win¬ 
ter together, but usually along toward fall 
the mother disappears. Whether the 
daughter helps to make away with her, 
whether she dies of old age, or whether the 
bees take a hand in the matter, is not 
known. 
The average queen bee will remain the 
mother of a colony for from two to three 
years. She may live to be as old as five or 
six years, but these cases are very rare. 
A typical box-hive apiary such as is to he seen all 
over the Southland. 
Usually a queen over two years old is not 
worth much, and most of our best bee¬ 
keepers believe that a queen over a year 
should be replaced by a younger one. See 
Age of Bees. 
The other individuals in the hive are 
male bees or drones. Their mouth parts 
and pollen-gathering apparatus are all very 
much aborted, and they have no sting. They 
are completely at the mercy of their sisters, 
and their only function is to mate the 
queen bee. This act takes place in the air, 
for apparently Nature has designed to pre¬ 
vent in-breeding. After the main honey 
Tipping- up the hives in a box-hive apiary, one after 
another, and looking “up under" to learn their 
condition. This is all the “inspection" with box hives. 
flow is over, the drones are rudely pushed 
out at the entrance by their sisters, where 
they soon starve to death. See Drones. 
The average young queen, when she sal¬ 
lies forth in the air on her wedding trip, 
may or may not find her consort from the 
