"There is not room in one house for two queens; one must go, and it is usually old Mrs. Honey-Bee. Surrounded by part of the family, she flies out of the old home in search of a new place. If she is living in some one's garden a new hive is all ready for her, and she soon settles down again to her egg-laying, while the workers hurry to bring in food for the new babies. If there is no hive ready for this exiled family, it swarms in a tree or any other good place it happens to find."
"Yes," said Betty; "but do the workers have to work all the time?"
"They do everything except the egg-laying. All the pollen and honey must be brought into the hive by them. Have you ever seen the little baskets which working bees have for carrying pollen? Perhaps you do not know what pollen is. Well, some day look right down in the centre of a flower and you will find some fine yellow powder. That is pollen, or bee bread, and the bees are very fond of it. On the hind leg of the worker is a nice smooth place, and on each side of it are stiff, curved hairs which cover it over. Into this little cage the bees push the pollen, then fly swiftly away toward the hive. Here this heavily laden little fellow stands over one of the rooms and pushes the pollen off his hind legs by scraping with his middle legs.
"You have eaten honey, and know how thick and sweet it is. Very unlike the sweetened water in the flower-cups, isn't it? The bees make this honey out of the watery nectar, and I will tell you how they do it. The bee sips this sweet nectar into its mouth, then the nectar goes down a tiny tube into a little pouch called the honey sac. This sac opens into the stomach, but between the two are little lips which guard the entrance. If the worker is hungry the little lips open, and the nectar goes from the honey sac into the stomach. But if it wants to carry it back to the hive the lips stay tightly closed. When the honey sac is full the worker flies back to the hive and empties it into one of the rooms.
"Then a number of bees stand with their heads bent downward and move their wings just as fast as they can, looking like miniature electric fans. Of course they grow very warm, and this makes the hive warm. This warm air evaporates the extra water in the nectar, and soon the honey is all finished. These bees which beat the air so tirelessly keep the hive fresh and sweet, which is very necessary when so many bees live in one house.
"The workers make the cells as well as fill them, and now a very queer thing happens. A great many bees eat a great deal of honey. They eat all they can hold, then crawl up to the top of the hive. There are as many there as can find room; the rest hang on to these until a curtain of bees is formed. Sometimes they hang quietly and patiently for several days until, on the under side of the abdomen, tiny shining plates of wax appear. Other workers break off these pieces of wax and build them up into cells. You know how big a pound is, don't you? Well, just think how many, many times the bees must carry honey to the hives when I tell you that twenty-one pounds of honey will make but one pound of wax. Bees are very economical with their wax. When they have to patch up holes and fill in cracks in their hives they do it with a gum which they scrape off sticky buds.
"All summer long these workers are laying in food to keep this large family during the cold weather. If for any reason the supply of food is low the workers sting the babies to death rather than have them starve. Is it any wonder that these workers, who have so much to do and so many cares from morning until night, die very young? The queen may live for two or three years, but the workers do not live longer than six or eight weeks."
"Goodness me!" said Jimmie, "I wouldn't have believed there was any insect on the face of the earth as clever as those bees! If insects were all like that, I'd want to know about every one of them. Can't you tell us something of the wasp? They must be clever fellows, too."
"Not to-day," answered Ben Gile; "it is getting toward noon, and we must start home for dinner and to get our partridge cooked. Pick up the birds, Jack, and put them in your game-bag. We must be off."