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The Queen EACH hive has long been known to possess one bee different from the others, and which received special care and attention from them.

This the ancients called a king.

Says Pliny: - "The kings have always a peculiar form of their own, and are double the size of any of the rest; their wings are shorter than those of the others, their legs are straight, their walk more upright, and they have a white spot on the forehead, which bears some resemblance to a diadem : they differ, too, very much from the rest of the community, in their bright and shining appearance. "The obedience which his subjects manifest in his presence is quite surprising. When he goes forth, the whole swarm attends him, throngs about him, surrounds him, protects him, and will not allow him to be seen. At other times, when the swarm is at work within, the king is seen to visit the works, and appears to be giving his encouragement, being himself the only one that is exempt from work: around him are certain other bees which act as body-guards and lictors, and careful guardians of his anthority. "When they are on the wing, every one is anxious to be near him, and takes a pleasure in being seen in the performance of its duty. When he is weary, they support him 1 on their shoulders; and when he is quite tired, they carry him outright."

Even as late as the time of Shakespeare the monarchical character of life in the hive was a matter of faith as we learn from "Henry V.," where the Archbishop of Canterbury, in talking to the king, uses the bees in illustration, "For so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom:

They have a king, and officers of sorts; Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds; Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor, Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone."

The bee which the old writers called the king is to-day called the queen. It is known to be a female, the only perfect female in the hive. It is also known that she is not a queen. She is a mother, the mother of all the colony.

The great mass of bees are the workers, which are imperfect - that is, undeveloped - females, unable as a rule to produce eggs.

The drones, comparatively few in number, are males.

The sex of the worker-bees, which are the ones we see flying about, is now well-known; but in poetry and literature the conventional masculine pronoun is always applied The Family to them, as, for instance, in Gay's "Rural Sports read, - " "The careful insect midst his works I view, Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew, With golden treasures load his little thighs, And steer his distant journey through the skies." we Butler in 1609 knew the sex of the so-called king and says: - "Aristotle entreating of the breeding of bees professeth himself uncertain of their sex: and therefore, (willing, in this uncertainty, to grace so worthy a creature with the worthier title) he everywhere calleth their governor, Rex. As many as followed him, (searching no further than he did) were content to say as he said. So that I am enforced (unless I will choose rather to offend in rebus, than in vocibus) by their leave and thine (learned Reader) to strain the ordinary signification of the word Rex; and, in such places, to translate it Queen: since the males here bear no sway at all; this being an Amazonian or Feminine kingdom."