CHAPTER XX

THE STORY OF THE HONEY BEE

“NOW,” began her strange little friend, “I shall tell you about the honey bees.

There are two thousand different kinds of bees known at the present time, but the most useful and best understood are the honey bees. The homes (usually wooden boxes) furnished by man for bees are called hives, but the wild bees live ordinarily in hollow trees or caves. The prettiest and gentlest family of the honey bees are the Italian Bees.

Perhaps you think you lead a busy life. If you worked from earliest morning to dark you could not be busier than good Mrs. Honey Bee, for she never trifles nor wastes a minute.

Perhaps you think she goes leisurely from flower to flower, sipping the sweet nectar, and has a very delightful time simply enjoying herself.

You are mistaken, then, for the worker honey bee is not thinking of herself at all, except to eat just enough to keep her well.

She is working for the good of the whole Bee family, and especially for the little Baby Bees.

You begin to see in all your studying, that almost all living things seem to live with the purpose of helping baby things like themselves to live.

So good Mrs. Bee is not gathering honey and pollen bee-flour to “gobble” them up, but is going to pack much of them away for the use of the bees who will live over winter, and for the baby bees, and for the male bees who have no way of gathering food from the flowers for themselves.

THE BEE CITY

A Beehive city is a wonderfully busy place.

From twenty thousand to forty thousand, or more, inhabitants live in the Bee City, so no wonder it is a busy place. You would think that everything would be in confusion, but on the contrary everything is in marvelous law and order. Every inhabitant knows just what part it is expected to do, and each kind of inhabitant is particularly fitted to do its own particular part.

{A Queen Bee, In every Beehive City there are {Many Worker Bees, {Quite a number of Drone Bees.

THE QUEEN BEE

The Queen Bee is the mother bee, and it is her duty to lay eggs, out of which Baby Bees are hatched.

WORKER BEES

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.

THE ANTENNÆ

The antennæ are so delicate that the bee can tell the shape and size of any object by just passing them over it. On the antennæ are smell-hollows with which the bee “scents out” the honey.

LEGS, WINGS, AND CLAWS

On the bee’s body, as you know, are the legs and wings. At the end of each leg is a pair of claws.

POLLEN BASKETS

On each hind leg of the Worker Bee is a hollow in which she packs the pollen flour which she gathers. These are the pollen baskets.

THE WINGS

The front pair of wings is larger than the hind pair, and often in older bees who have done much work, the edges are frayed and torn.

THE INDUSTRY OF THE WORKER

A Worker Bee does not live often over five weeks. She actually works herself to death!

Just think. A bee has to visit nearly one hundred flowers to fill her honey-sack with nectar, and when it is full, it does not contain a full drop!

WAX POCKETS

Under the body of the Worker Bee are the little wax pockets. The wax is very important, as it is used to make the cells in which the honey is stored, and the cells in which the eggs are laid.

THE HONEY-SAC

The honey, you remember, is carried to the hive in the honey-sac of the Worker Bees.

THE BODY OF THE QUEEN BEE

The Queen Bee, or Mother Bee, is longer than the Worker Bee and has a tapering, graceful body. She has no pollen basket, because it is not part of her work to gather pollen or honey, her work being to lay eggs—sometimes as many as three thousand in twenty-four hours, equal to about twice her own weight!

THE STING

Both the Worker Bees and the Queen Bee have a sting to use as a weapon of defense.

When enemies, such as mice, or moths, or bees from other hives get into the hive to steal honey, the sting is very much needed by the Worker Bees, as you can easily see.

The Queen uses her sting in a different way, as I shall tell you later on.

THE BODY OF THE DRONE

The Drone Bee differs much in appearance from the Worker and Queen, his body being broad and blunt. His eyes are very large and wings strong. He has no wax pockets nor pollen pockets. His tongue is not long enough to get honey from the flowers. He cannot even find food for himself, and when driven out of the hive, as sometimes in the Autumn, he starves to death in a short time.