LIBRARY

HYMENOPTERA 719
Water - collected directly or ext.racted from the nectar and used for feeding
young and adults.
Royal jelly - a highly nutritious material which is secreted mostly by
young adult workers and fed to all very young larvre. It constitutes the entire
food of the larvre destined to become queens.
LIFE HISTORY
Duration of stages - these vary somewhat with temperatures (after Lochhead).
Queen ..................... .
Drone ..................... .
Worker .................... .
* Days.
Egg *
3
3
3
Larva ..
5kl
6
5
Pupu*
7
15
13
Total *
15Yz
24
21
Swarming - a departure from the old colony, all of the reasons for which
are unknown. Among other reasons, however, is the desire to relieve overcrowding
and to establish new colonies. This departure usually consists of the
old queen and a large following of drones and workers; may occur from none to
many times in a season; usually in late spring and early summer and after a new
queen and drones appear. A new queen remaining in the old colony stings to
death any other young rivals and. after a nuptial mating flight in midair. returns
to the hive and continues the egg laying for the colony.
Mating - occurs in spring. summer. or fall in midair during the nuptial
flight of the queen. The spermatheca is filled with spermatozoa from the male,
there being sufUcient to fertilize all the eggs subsequently laid to produce workers
and queen. Queens usually mate but once. Drones mayor may not be
killed by the workers after mating or in the late fall or when food is scarce.
ECONOMIC VALUE
Aside from production of honey and wax, which is of great value in many
parts of the world, the honeybee is probably of greatest importance to agriculture
in the pollination of plants. The benefits thus derived are so far-reaching
as to be impossible of estimation. In many of the orchards farmers and beekeepers
are cooperating in the use of honeybees to cross-pollinate the blossoms
of fruit trees. Many varieties of these trees cannot be profitably fertilized in
any other manner, and other apparently self-fertilizing varieties are very
greatly benefited by the work of the bees. For this purpose one stand of bees
is recommended for each acre of mature orchard trees.
tion of an insect or object of nature made with the aid of a lens. Items which indicate the use
of an instrument of magnification are: (4). ring segments of antenna; (5). plumed body hairs;
(6). hairy and facetted eye; (9), and details of the mouth parts and (11), the pollen basket.
The original was prepared by Frederico Cesi (1585-1630) and appeared in a work entitled
"Apiarium" which was printed by the f"!rst Academia dei Lincei at Rome in 1625. The figures
were also printed later by Francesco Stelluti in an Italian translation of the poems of Persius
in Rome in 1630. (After Bodenheimer. 1929.)