We have already referred to the fact that a worker bee and a virgin queen are capable of producing eggs. The progeny of these eggs, however, although they may be produced in worker cells, are drones, fully developed, though smaller than those hatched in drone-cells. When this state of affairs is discovered in the hive the bee-keeper must ascertain by observation whether it is the queen's doings, and, if so, depose her and, if that of a fertile worker, destroy her. As a rule a fertile worker deposits her eggs in a scattered sort of way, but as the cells containing them are always capped as drone-cells—that is the cappings are raised in a dome-like way—they are easily distinguishable to the experienced eye.
Worker Bee
Queen Bee
Drone Bee
(Magnified two diameters. Photographs by John J. Ward, F.E.S. )
Metamorphosis.—The metamorphosis, or change of form, which occurs in the early life history of the bee is among the most interesting in the insect world. When the egg is deposited by the queen, it rests on end on the bottom of the cell and almost parallel with the sides. At the close of the first day it inclines to an angle of about 45°, and after two days it falls to the floor of the cell. As a rule, the period of incubation is three days, and the grub is immediately taken charge of by the nurse bees, and fed according to the kind of cell in which it has been placed. At the end of five or six days the grub is sealed up in its cell to undergo the next, or pupa, stage of its existence. Generally speaking, the queen is ready to leave her cell on the fifteenth day, the worker on the twenty-first, and the drone on the twenty-fourth day from the time the egg is laid. If the weather is cold these periods may be extended: it is a curious fact that the egg of an insect can often bear a greater intensity of cold without injury than can the developed insect.
Anatomy of the Bee.—It is advisable that all bee-keepers should know something of the structure of the bee, of its principal organs and their functions. The subject is too technical to be dealt with at length in a volume such as this, but the following notes may be of sufficient service to rouse interest to further inquiry.