Each eye consists of a great number of facets, which are really smaller eyes, and this is the reason the eye is called compound. The eye of the worker contains over 6000 of them, and each one points in a slightly different direction. Large as this number may appear, it is less than half that possessed by the drone, whose facets actually number 13,000 in each eye. As a matter of interest, I may tell you that the queen bee has the least number of all, having but 5000. Each facet acts as a tiny lens. A lens, as you perhaps know, is something so shaped as to throw an image of the object to which it is directed. A camera has a lens of glass, and by the aid of this lens a picture can be taken of any object to which the camera is pointed. In that case the image of the object is thrown upon what is called a photographic plate. Our own eyes act as lenses, and throw an image of whatever we look at, not upon a photographic plate, but upon a sensitive surface called the _retina_. This word comes from the Latin, and means a “small net,” and it is a very good name, for the retina catches the picture from the pupil of the eye, and passes it on to the brain. Although we might imagine that these compound eyes were sufficient for any purpose, yet we find that the bee has three more eyes; these are called the “simple” eyes. They are situated on the top of the head, and you may see one of them in (_b_) Plate VI. The other two are over the top of the head, for the three eyes are arranged in this manner ∵ so as to form a triangle. You will remember that the drone is furnished with a far greater number of facets than the worker. Consequently the compound eyes of the drone are much larger, and they not only take up the whole of the space at the sides of the head, but also extend right over the top, covering the position occupied by the simple eyes in the worker. Owing to this fact, the drone’s simple eyes are placed lower down, on the front of his head, their position corresponding pretty closely to the place our own eyes occupy. The simple eyes are so called because they do not seem to be nearly so complicated in their construction as the compound eyes, but the microscope shows that they also have an elaborate structure. If we were to cut open the front of a bee’s head, we should find that the simple eyes are set like this:-- [Illustration] You will notice that the two top ones (marked L. E. left eye and R. E. right eye) point in an outward direction, and it is by their aid that the bee can see sideways. The lower eye (F. E. front eye) is directed forwards, and with it things in front can be seen. The simple eyes are surrounded with tufts of hair (marked e. b. eyebrows), which are so placed that they do not interfere with the range of vision.