We are back at the hive. The wedding flight of the queen will soon occur. Before we came, she had gone out to locate landmarks and to test her wings.

The sky today is bright and the sunshine paints the hills in designs of shadow and shade. The queen looks about in the bright morning then she soars away into the blue sky. She flys as high as she can. A number of the usually lazy drones follow her. The drone that flys as high as the queen mates with her while on the wing. After the mating, the drone dies and the queen comes home alone.

Before mating, the queen could lay only drone eggs. Now she can lay worker eggs as well; laying either kind, drone or worker, when she wishes; so she controls how many drones and how many workers will be born into the city.

What will happen now? Another friendly drone tells us that the queen and her royal attendants will make a tour of inspection. Let us go along with her to see more of this wonderful bee city.

Bees Working On The Comb

We are in the lower section. Ten long frames of comb are in this part. Narrow streets run between them. This is the brood chamber. Here are the cells where baby bees will be hatched and where honey and pollen will be stored. The queen lives here after the wedding flight. Faithful servants always surround her. She is really a prisoner.

The man who owns the bees has placed a wire screen between the brood chamber and the honey rooms above. Through holes in this screen the workers pass upstairs, but Her Majesty and the drones are too large to climb through them. The screen keeps the queen from laying eggs in the honey storehouse and prevents the lazy drones from eating too much of the honey which the workers have gathered.

A worker comes through the door into the nursery. Her pollen baskets are bulging so heavily with golden grains that the hind legs, of which the baskets are a part, fairly sag with the weight. The worker backs her body into a cell, then she pries the pellets of pollen from the baskets which are on her legs. When the pollen is safely deposited, the worker leaves the cell and a young bee enters, head first. With her head she rams the pollen into a compact cake at the bottom of the cell. The bees store the pollen in separate cells near the brood nest and apart from the honey cells.

We find it very interesting to watch the young bees at work. Those who are too young to leave the hive are called "nurse bees. " They do nearly every task that is done inside the hive. These tasks are many. Before the queen begins to lay eggs, the young bees clean and polish the cells until they shine. They care for and feed the thousands of young bees of a hive. The nurse bees are kept very busy with their many duties.

Some of the young workers make wax which they obtain from the wax pockets on their lower abdomens. We shall learn more about the wonder of wax making when we watch the bees build a home.

Some of the hive workers store away the honey. The bee that brings honey from the flowers does not deposit it in the cell. She gives it to a hive worker. They place their tongues together and the hive worker takes the honey into her honey sac, then she places the honey in a cell for curing. It stays there until the moisture has been properly evaporated when it becomes ready for use.

Changing nectar into honey requires more than just the removal of moisture. The bees add to it certain properties from their bodies which change the strong and complex sugar of nectar to the simple sugar of honey. We do not have to digest honey when we eat it because the bees have changed it in their own bodies for us. The skillful bees preserve for us not only the sweetness of the flowers but also the mineral salts and other products which the plants give out in nectar. These minerals and salts give the honey the taste or flavor of the flower from which the honey was gathered. That is why we have different kinds of honey.

Our visits to the bees have been very pleasant. I am sure that in a little while they will let us come again to see more of their busy and interesting city.

I thought, when but a little boy, Madam Bee so fine a singer That I would bring her home with me; But, only brought her stinger.