. [Articles about birds from National geographic magazine]. Birds. MAN'S WINGED ALLY, THE BUSY HONEYBEE 407 a porous cap is placed over the cell and it spins its cocoon. In this stage it remains for 12 days, develop- ing from a wormlike grub into a fully ma- tured worker bee. Thus the period from egg laying to maturity is 21 days, and there will be 12 sealed-in age groups in the hive at one time (Plate II). The nursery duties occupy only a portion of the available work- ers. Others build new comb from the wax which they themselves secrete. Hundreds of new cells are necessary to store incoming
. [Articles about birds from National geographic magazine]. Birds. MAN'S WINGED ALLY, THE BUSY HONEYBEE 407 a porous cap is placed over the cell and it spins its cocoon. In this stage it remains for 12 days, develop- ing from a wormlike grub into a fully ma- tured worker bee. Thus the period from egg laying to maturity is 21 days, and there will be 12 sealed-in age groups in the hive at one time (Plate II). The nursery duties occupy only a portion of the available work- ers. Others build new comb from the wax which they themselves secrete. Hundreds of new cells are necessary to store incoming nec- tar. The bee that brings the nectar from the field does not de- posit it in the cell, but gives it to a nurse bee, who, in turn, places it in that part of the hive where the process of conversion into honey will begin. THE HIVES ARE AIR- CONDITIONED Newly gathered nec- tar generally contains so much water that, if it were immediately stored, it would soon ferment. The bees, therefore, remove the largely through a well-organized and effi- cient system of fanning (Plate I). In the midst of a good harvest a hive may lose one-fourth as much during the night as it gained the previous day. The temperature is regulated much more closely than in most modern homes. The bees are able, even with a range of SO de- grees outside, to keep the temperature of the brood nest within two or three degrees of normal. The warm weather of midsum- mer finds each colony well equipped with a cooling system composed of a corps of fan- ners, because the temperature for brood. AFRICAN NATIVES HANG THEIR HIVES AMID © R. 0. Pearse THE BLOSSOMS Modern beekeepers place their colonies near the ground, enabling heavily laden workers to enter easily. A hollow tree trunk closed at each end except for a small hole for the bees to enter serves as this hive in Kenya. To tap the sweet harvest is a messy, risky job if the bees have not been smoked to death beforehand. moisture, rearing must be maintained
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