What Are Drone Bees Good for?
The worker brood can at once be distinguished from the drone brood by
the fact that the workers place a flat cap over worker brood and a high
arched cap over drone brood; and this is often a great help to the
bee-keeper in enabling him to determine at once what kind of brood any
hive contains. Twenty-one days from the time the egg is laid the young
worker-bee emerges from its cell, having gone through some wonderful
transformations during the time it was sealed up, this stage being
known as the pupa stage. For drones the time is twenty-four days.
[Illustration: HOW A SWARM WILL SOMETIMES OCCUPY A SMALL TREE AND BEND
IT OVER BY ITS WEIGHT.]
About the time the drones begin to appear, the inmates of the hive
begin to prepare for swarming, which, to any one watching the habits
of bees, is one of the most interesting things which takes place in
the colony. Several young worker larvæ are chosen as the material
for queen-rearing, generally located near the margin of the comb.
The workers now begin to feed these chosen larvæ an extra amount of
food and at the same time the sides of the cells containing them are
remodeled and enlarged by the destruction of surrounding cells. The
queen (or royal) cell is nearly horizontal at the top, like the other
cells of the comb, and projects beyond them; but then the workers
construct another portion to the cell into which the queen larva moves.
This is an acorn-shaped cell placed vertically on the comb, about as
large as three ordinary cells. As the cell is being built, the queen
larva continues to grow until the time comes for her to be sealed up
and enter her pupa state. Although it takes the worker twenty-one days
to complete its development, the queen passes through all the stages
and reaches a considerably larger size in but sixteen days.
[Illustration: THE DAILY GROWTH OF LARVÆ.]
[Illustration: DRONE-COMB.