The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1885-06-26
The Busy Bees.
for TIE LEISURE Horn.
BIZ j. A. ).

the year, and there will he found one
perfect queen, and from two or three
Thousand to twenty thousand workers,
and some hundreds of drones. In the
early summer a hive will contain sew
eral hundred drHnes and sometimes as
high as 20, 600 workers. The queen is
Che female bee, and the drones are the
males. The workers were long eonsid-
cred neuters, bat are really females or.
queens partially developed. Reared
in cells too small for their full develop
ment, and denied the rich food with
come forth dwarfeG in size and limited
in functions; but the better adapted to
perform their specialpart in the apiari-
an economy. They gather the honey
construct the comb, feed and rear the
young, repel intruders, and are always
ready to lay down their lives in defense
of home and kindred. The worker is
armed with a sting which it is ever
ready to use when its own safety or the
common welfare of the hive is threat
ened, although to use it is certain
death to itself
The queen is literally the mother of
her country. The inmates of the hive
are all her own progeny. The eggs
from which the young are reared are
all deposited by q single queen. She
seems to be treated with the greatest
reverence and affection by the other
bees; and is continually surrounded by
a body guard of six to a dozen of her
devoted subjects. Ii she disappears or
is lost the whole community is instant
ly seized with an uncomfortable ter
ror. All is confusion and anarchy until
the joyful hum announces that she Is
found, when in a few seconds perfect
tranquility reigns. Ii the queen is not
found and the hive contains worker
eggs or larvae less than three days old,
the bees will soon rear another queen;
but if this cannot be done, helpless
despair settles upon the hive, all la
Dor is abandoned and the little commu-
nifty is soon extinct.
The seeming reverence for the queen
is not to be attributed to filial affection
nor to sentiments of patriotism. 1t is
purely a business instinct. Ii the queen
by accident, disease or old age, become
unfruitful. she is mercilessly destroyed,
and immediate steps are taken to rear
a successor.
The queen, too, is provided with a
sting, which it employs only for the
destruction of rival queens. 1t may
be captured and handled with impun-
ity, and may even be torn limb from
limb without once offering to sting the
hand thai mangles it.
The drones are stingless. They r
gentlemen of elegant leisure, subsist-
ing upon the fruits of the labor of 9TH
ers; but their luxurious career is usual
ly brief. As soon as the swarming
season is over, the workers fall upon
them with irresistible fury and destroy
them utterly, not one being left to tell.
the story. For the remainder of the
year the amazons conduct the govern
ment according TO their w notions.
/ This wholesale destruction of the
drones can hardly De attributed to, a
blind instinct, for if the swarm be de-
prived of its queen, the drones are per-
mitted to live until a new queen is
reared, although the work of destruc-
ton goes on undated in neighboring
hives.
For gathering honey the worker bee
is provided with a proboscis form
ed by an extension of the lower
lip. The proboscis is not a tube
used in suction as commonly sup
posed, but performs the office Of a
tongue, and is used in licking up fluid
sweets from the hectares OF flowers.
1t is also provided with a honey sack
in which it stores it's gathered sweets
to be borne TO the hive. The walls. of
the ~honey-sack are muscular, so that
having arrived at home the bee is en-
abled to force out the contents of the
sack through its mouth into the honey
cells. However long the nectar may
have remained in the honey-sack, it
has undergone no change but is pre-
cisely the same as when taken from
the flowers.
The pollen of flowers is also gathered
in large quantities, principally as food
for Young bees. In the early spring
before pollen can be had, the bees will
consume large quantities of rye-meal
or wheaton Hour, when placed within
their reach. Every n understands
how the bees render a great service in
the fertilization of plants while gath
ering pollen, by bearing it from one
flower to another; but the most re-
markable thing is, that in gathering
pollen the bee never visits more thar
one species of flower on the same ex-
cursion. Were it otherwise it would
be of much less service in plant fer
tilization.
The bee gathers from the buds of va
rious trees a species of gum OF glue,
called propolls, for use in closing
cracks in the hive, and for covering
Over foreign substances of q disagree
able character, too large to be re
moved. Honey, pollen, and propolis,
then, are vegetable substances gathered
and stored IN the hive, just as they are
found in nature, in no manner changed
by the bees; but the wax of which the
beautiful snow-whiIe comb is made, is