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.