=The Drone.=--The drone is the male bee. He is the progeny of an unfertilised egg laid by the queen, or by a fertile worker. His life is usually a short and merry one. He lives entirely on the labour of others, and, unless there is something radically wrong with the hive, he is seen only during the spring and summer months, when his services are in requisition. When on the wing the drone is by far the noisiest of bees, although the sound he makes is somewhat similar to that made by the worker when on the warpath, the note of warning to the disturbing human, and the trumpet call to her fellow-workers. Owing to the peculiar structure of the drone, mating can only take place in the air, and when it has been accomplished the drone returns to the hive but to die. When the honey-flow fails the death warrant of the drones still in the hive is issued. They are seized by the workers and killed or ejected from the hive. To the onlooker there is a certain amount of amusement to watch this slaughter of the non-producers of the community: to see a couple of workers wrestling with the unwieldy drone, perhaps biting off one of his wings in the effort to disable him, before the finishing stroke is given. When, however, a bee-keeper sees the array of dead drones he will probably think it would have been better for him had they been workers--producers rather than consumers of honey. It is, of course, greatly to the advantage of a bee-keeper that the number of the drones should be kept down as low as possible. This can be done by giving the bees full sheets of bees-wax impressed completely with the basal forms of the natural worker cells, thus inducing them to confine their building to those cells only. We have already referred to the fact that a worker bee and a virgin queen are capable of producing eggs. The progeny of these eggs, however, although they may be produced in worker cells, are drones, fully developed, though smaller than those hatched in drone-cells. When this state of affairs is discovered in the hive the bee-keeper must ascertain by observation whether it is the queen's doings, and, if so, depose her and, if that of a fertile worker, destroy her. As a rule a fertile worker deposits her eggs in a scattered sort of way, but as the cells containing them are always capped as drone-cells--that is the cappings are raised in a dome-like way--they are easily distinguishable to the experienced eye. [Illustration: Worker Bee] [Illustration: Queen Bee] [Illustration: Drone Bee] (_Magnified two diameters. Photographs by John J. Ward, F.E.S._ )