The Worker Bees do the work of the Beehive City. They gather food, and feed and care for the inhabitants, and keep the city clean.
Drone Bees
The Drone or male Bees do not work. Their bodies help keep the hive warm, but they cannot do any real work. One of them is the husband of the Queen Bee, but after she first marries him she doesn’t pay any attention to him. She is too busy laying eggs in the cradle cells the Worker Bees have made.
Why the Workers Kill the Drones
Yes, it is expensive to feed the Drone Bees, and when the weather begins to turn cool, perhaps in September or October, the Worker Bees who up to that time have cared for the Drones, begin to rid the Hive City of them. They bite off their wings, and bite them in half sometimes—anything to kill them or send them away. No, it is not as cruel as it sounds, for you see, if Drone Bees kept on living they would eat up the honey which is so much needed in the Winter by the Worker Bees and the Queen who live over to care for the new Baby Bees in the Spring.
The Wonderful Bodies of the Bees
Now, each different kind of honey bee has a body which is particularly fitted to the work it has to perform.
The Body of the Worker Bee
The Worker Bee, the one you see so often on flowers, has a body made especially for the kind it is to do. It has many excellent eyes which look to you like but two eyes, unless you see them under the magnifying glass, and wonderful an-ten-næ, and a tongue in its head. The antennæ are its horn-like feelers, and they resemble your arms in the way they reach out, and examine objects by “handling” them.