Fig. 11.—Cross section of brood apartment: s, s, sides of hive; t, t, top-bars of frames; h, p, l, sb, combs containing (h) honey, (p) pollen, (l) larvæ and eggs, and (sb) sealed brood. (Original.)
THE WORKER.
The worker larvæ are fed five days, and then the cell is given by the adult bees a covering which is quite porous by reason of numerous pollen grains incorporated into its mass, this openness of texture being necessary to give the developing bee air to breathe. The larva strength ens this capping by a loose webwork of silk within, extending down the side but slightly and attached at its edges to the last skin cast by the molting larva. This skin, extremely delicate and pressed closely against the inside of the cell, forms the lining of its sides and bottom. In about twelve days after sealing, that is, twenty-one days from the time the egg was deposited, the imago, or perfect bee, bites its way through the brown covering.
In the course of a couple of days it takes up the work of a nurse, and in a week to ten days may appear at the entrance on pleasant days, taking, however, but short flights for exercise, as ordinary field work is not undertaken until it has passed about two weeks in the care of brood. The worker then takes up also wax secretion, if honey is to be capped over or combs built, although old bees can and do to a certain extent engage in wax production.
THE DRONE.
Eggs left unfertilized produce drones and require twenty-four days from the time they are deposited until the perfect insect appears. They are normally deposited in the larger-sized horizontal cells, and when the latter are sealed, the capping is more convex as well as lighter-colored than that of worker brood, which is brown and nearly flat.
The fact that drones develop from unfertilized eggs is to be noted as having an important practical bearing in connection with the introduction of new strains of a given race or of new races of bees into an apiary. From a single choice home-bred or imported mother, young queens of undoubted purity of blood may be reared for all of the colonies of the apiary, and since the mating of these young queens does not affect their drone progeny, thereafter only drones of the desired strain or race and pure in blood will be produced, rendering, therefore, the pure mating of future rearings fairly certain if other bees are not numerous within a mile or two. Eventually also all of the colonies will be changed to the new race and without admixture of impure blood, provided always that the young queens be reared from mothers of pure blood mated to drones of equal purity.
CHAPTER III.
QUIETING AND MANIPULATING BEES.
The demeanor of bees toward an individual depends largely upon his bearing and treatment of them. Langstroth, in his excellent treatise, Langstroth on the Honey Bee (p. 193, revised edition), says: