The worker bee is much smaller than the queen. On the worker devolves all the labor of the swarm. They collect honey, pollen or bee bread, and propolis, or bee glue. The workers produce wax from honey, and from the wax they build comb, in which to store the honey and bee bread they collect, for their own use in time of need. Wax is produced from honey, as butter is produced from milk. Bees do not collect wax, but they collect honey, which by a natural process in the stomach of the bee is changed, and exudes from between the rings of the abdomen in minute scales of wax, which is detached by the bee and moulded into comb. The worker bee possesses a sting, and is ever ready to make use of it in defending home and treasure. This is a wise provision of nature, for were it otherwise, the other insect and animal tribes would appropriate the treasures of the bee—honey, wax, etc., and this industrious little insect would soon become instinct.
The worker bee possesses an instinct but little inferior to reason in the human family. A few examples will show their wonderful instinct: Twenty hives of bees, placed in a row, but a few inches distant one from the other, all of like size, shape and color; the bees to our perception exactly alike, no difference in size, shape, color or action;—yet every bee of this vast number (which at some seasons of the year would amount to more than six hundred thousand bees) in these twenty hives knows its own hive, and if let alone will not enter any other, except it be for the purpose of securing the honey therein for its own use, or in other words to plunder and rob its neighbor. There is no intercourse between swarms; each is a separate colony governed by a queen. If through mistake the subjects of one enter the domain of another, a war of extermination is commenced at once. To test this point, I changed two hives so that they were reversed, the one occupying the place of the other. This was done while the bees were out collecting honey in a warm day. The first bees that entered the hive were instantly killed, and this was kept up until the hives were set in their proper places. The ground in front of the hives was covered with hundreds of dead bees. A bee is killed almost instantly by the sting of another.
The young bee on its first excursion from the hive does not leave its home without precaution. With a view to a safe return, it turns its head towards its home, rises slowly on the wing, at first describing a circle of only a few inches in diameter, as it recedes slowly backward, seeming to so mark every object surrounding the hive, as to enable it to return and enter, without the slightest danger of entering any other hive. Bees in spring, in their first flight, mark their location in this manner. After the location has been thus marked, the bees leave the hive in a direct line, and return by their way-marks with perfect accuracy and regularity.
The drone bee is a clumsy fellow. The drones are the male bees. Where a dozen or more hives are kept, there is no necessity for more drones than one swarm would naturally rear, yet each one of the twelve swarms carries out its natural proclivities, and rears a large number of these useless consumers, not one of a thousand of which is ever of any use. Swarms should not be permitted to rear a large number of these non-producers. A few are indispensable, yet we should take this matter into our own hands. Not one drone in five thousand ever fulfills the purpose for which it was created. Fifty drone cells are enough for one hive, and when more than this number are constructed (sometimes they will number a thousand or more in a hive) cut out all but a very few, and fit in a piece of worker comb in their place—it is more profit to raise workers than drones. Drones leave the hive to sport in the sunshine in large numbers, every fine afternoon in June and July. When on the wing, they make a very loud, coarse buzzing. They have no sting and may be handled without the least fear.
When the honey season is over, the worker bees drive out the drones, and a prosperous swarm will not tolerate a drone in the hive through the winter. In September I have seen a quarter or more of drones clustered together near the entrance of the hive, whence they had been driven by the bees. The workers on guard about the entrance of the hive, would not let one pass into the hive, though they were constantly making the attempt. As soon as one would approach the entrance to the hive to pass in, a half-dozen or more workers would seize him, and drag him struggling to the edge of the platform and pitch him off, at apparent great danger to his portly and clumsy body.
I wish to impress strongly on the minds of all who adopt my plan of bee management, the great importance of cutting out drone cells, except a few in every hive. Don't leave more than fifty, half of that number will do. After you have once cut out the surplus drone comb and fitted in worker comb, there is no further trouble with an excess of drones from that hive. It takes a great deal of honey to rear a large brood of drones, and still more to support them in idleness two or three months.
This engraving represents a section of comb in a miniature comb frame, containing all the different cells found in a hive. At the top are cells for storing honey. At the extreme right, near the bottom, is a queen cell complete, as it appears in queen raising, or in one week after a swarm has been deprived of its queen, in a full stock or as it is found in stocks that swarm naturally, at the time the first swarm issues. Though often found in different places on the comb, and often to the number of a half-dozen or more in one stock or hive, yet its relative position is always the same. It will always present the same appearance, whether at the edges or on other parts of the comb. Near the queen cells is seen the worker cells, containing brood in all stages of growth from the tiny egg just deposited by the queen to the full-grown grub or young bee. Near the worker cells, at the bottom, are the empty cells.