The Bee Family
This interesting family called in bee culture a colony, lives in a house known as a hive many of which aggregate form a bee city—an apiary. The family consists of three types of bees, the queen, Fig. 7-a, the mother of the family and naturally the only one of her nature in the colony. She is a fully developed female bee whose sole duty is that of laying eggs and increasing her family—the population of the colony—which reaches large numbers. The worker, Fig. 7-b, is an undeveloped female, and this type represents the largest number of the colony’s population, which may run from several thousand to eighty-five or one hundred thousand in one hive or family. As the name indicates the workers gather all the honey and food, care for the young bees and perform other duties in the hive. The drone, Fig. 7-c, is the male bee. He, as his name indicates, contributes nothing to the upkeep of the family, a family in which truly “everybody works but father.” The queen is able to control the strength of the colony. The workers by construction of a queen cell about an egg and by giving different food may develop a queen from what would otherwise have been developed into a worker.