These rulers have the abdomen or
part below the waist half as large again, and they are called by
some the 'mothers', from an idea that they bear or generate the
bees; and, as a proof of this theory of their motherhood, they declare
that the brood of the drones appears even when there is no ruler-bee
in the hive, but that the bees do not appear in his absence. Others,
again, assert that these insects copulate, and that the drones are
male and the bees female.
The ordinary bee is generated in the cells of the comb, but
the ruler-bees in cells down below attached to the comb, suspended
from it, apart from the rest, six or seven in number, and growing in a
way quite different from the mode of growth of the ordinary brood.
Bees are provided with a sting, but the drones are not so
provided. The rulers are provided with stings, but they never use
them; and this latter circumstance will account for the belief of some
people that they have no stings at all.
22
Of bees there are various species. The best kind is a little round
mottled insect; another is long, and resembles the anthrena; a third
is a black and flat-bellied, and is nick-named the 'robber'; a
fourth kind is the drone, the largest of all, but stingless and
inactive.
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