Wisconsin State Agricultural Society . 289 
Man cannot obtain labor from any other source as cheap as from 
the honey-bee, as they work for nothing and find themselves, re¬ 
quiring only a free tenement. The census returns of 1850 show 
the amount of wax and honey in the United States to be 14,853,790 
pounds. In 1860, 126,386,855 pounds. With the increased atten¬ 
tion given to the pursuit, together with the increase of colonies, 
we have no doubt that the present returns will show a vast increase 
of product. Possessing, as we do, a genial climate and a fertile soil, 
producing plants with a due degree of skill and enterprise, capable 
of the production of richly varied honey and flowers, the bees can 
be increased to an extent that the profit arising therefrom will pay 
all our taxes, and furnish our tables daily with one of the choicest 
luxuries of life. 
The honey-bee belongs to the genus apis and is of that class of 
insects that live in perfect societies. A full colony or swarm con¬ 
sists of one queen, being a perfect female, and fifteen to thirty 
thousand workers, and also a few hundred drones. The latter are 
the only perfect males and are only found during the summer or 
swarming season. No colony can long exist without a queen. She 
lays all the eggs, but does not govern her subjects or dictate their 
workings, but is governed by them in all her movements, being fed 
by them to control the number of eggs required according to the 
season and capacity of the hive. When she becomes old she is su¬ 
perceded by a young queen, raised by the workers, who kill the old 
one. The same egg that will produce a queen can also produce a 
drone or worker, depending on the skill of the latter in forming 
the cell and kind of food furnished. If a queen is required, three 
cells are converted into one, and the young grub on being removed 
to it must not be more than five days old, and then fed for eleven 
days on what is called payal jelly. Hence, a queen is produced in 
sixteen days, while it requires twenty-one to develop workers. 
Within from three to six days after the queen leaves her cell, she 
flies abroad to mate with the drones in the air, and returns to make 
the hive populous. Her natural life is four years, but is sometimes 
superceded in the first year. A prolific queen will lay two or three 
thousand eggs per day. The workers are smaller than the queen 
or drone and are in fact non-sexual, though really imperfect females; 
yet they nurse the young, gather the honey, obtain the pollen, pro¬ 
polis-glue and other substances requisite for honey-preserving pur- 
19 A 
