The drones, aside from contributing somewhat to the general warmth of the hive necessary to the development of the brood, seem to have no other office but that connected with reproduction. In the wild state colonies of bees are widely separated, being located wherever the swarms chance to have found hollow trees or rock cavities, hence the production of many drones has been provided for, so young queens flying out to mate will not run too many risks from bird and insect enemies, storms, etc. Mating in the hive would result in too continuous in-and-in breeding, producing loss of vigor. As we find it arranged, the most vigorous are the most likely to reproduce their species.
At the time of the queen's mating there are in the hive neither eggs nor young larvæ from which to rear another queen; thus, should she be lost, no more fertilized eggs would be deposited, and the old workers gradually dying off without being replaced by young ones, the colony would become extinct in the course of a few months at most, or meet a speedier fate through intruders, such as wax-moth larvæ, robber bees, wasps, etc., which its weakness would prevent its repelling longer; or cold is very likely to finish such a decimated colony, especially as the bees, because queenless, are uneasy and do not cluster compactly.
The loss of queens while flying out to mate is evidently one of the provisions in nature to prevent bees from too great multiplication, for were there no such checks they would soon become a pest in the land. On the other hand, the risk to the queen is not uselessly increased, for she mates but once during her life.
Fig. 7.—Modifications of the legs of different bees: A, Apis: a, wax pincer and outer view of hind leg; b, inner aspect of wax pincer and leg; c, compound hairs holding grains of pollen; d, anterior leg, showing antenna cleaner; e, spur on tibia of middle leg. B, Melipona: f, peculiar group of spines at apex of tibia of hind leg; g, inner aspect of wax pincer and first joint of tarsus. C, Bombus: h, wax pincer; i, inner view of same and first joint of tarsus—all enlarged. (From Insect Life.)
BEE PRODUCTS AND ORGANS USED IN THEIR PREPARATION.
Fig. 8.—Head and tongue of Apis mellifera worker (magnified twelve times), a, Antenna, or feeler; m, mandibula, or outer jaw; g, gum flap, or epipharynx; mxp, maxillary palpus; pg, paraglossa; mx, maxilla, or inner jaw; lp, labial palpus, l, ligula, or tongue; b, bouton, or spoon of the same. (Reduced from Cheshire.)
Pollen and honey form the food of honey bees and their developing brood. Both of these are plant products which are only modified somewhat by the manipulation to which they are subjected by the bees and are then stored in waxen cells if not wanted for immediate use. Pollen, the fertilizing dust of flowers, is carried home by the bees in small pellets held in basket-like depressions on each of the hind legs. The hairs covering the whole surface of the bee's body are more or less serviceable in enabling the bee to collect pollen, but those on the under side of the abdomen are most likely to get well dusted, and the rows of hairs, nine in number, known as pollen brushes, located on the inner surface of the first tarsal joint ([fig. 7, b]), are then brought into use to brush out this pollen. When these brushes are filled with pollen the hind legs are crossed during flight and the pollen combed out by the spine-like hairs that fringe the posterior margin of the tibial joint—that above a in [fig. 7]. The outer surface of this joint is depressed, and this, with the rows of curved hairs on the anterior margin and the straighter ones just referred to forms a basket like cavity known as the corbiculum or pollen basket, represented by the longest joints of the legs, A, B, and C, [fig. 7]. Into this the pollen falls, and with the middle pair of legs is tamped down for transportation to the hive. Having arrived there, the bee thrusts its hind legs into a cell located as near to the brood nest as may be, and loosening the pellets lets them fall into the bottom of the cell. The tibial spur ([fig. 7, e]) on each middle leg is, as Professor Cheshire has pointed out, probably of use in prying the pellets out. The latter are simply dropped into cells and left for some other bee to pack down by kneading or pressing with its mandibles. Various colors—yellow, brown, red, slate, etc., according to the kinds of flowers from which gathered—frequently show in layers in the same cell. Often when partly filled with pollen the cell is then filled up with honey and sealed more or less hermetically with wax. The bees store the pollen, for convenience in feeding, above and at the sides of the brood and as near to it as possible, the comb on each side of the brood nest being generally well stored with it.