The beginning of my love for bees dates back to my earliest childhood, and all I remember is that as a very small boy, nothing made me happier than escaping from the supervising maid and running to neighbor Gottlob Richter's bees. When the lovely maid came after me to bring me back, I would stand right in the flight path of the bees and mockingly call out to her, "Come on, come on!" On June 28, 1822, my 7th birthday, my father bought me my first beehive. When comparing a queen, a worker bee, and a drone, one will immediately notice the significantly different body shapes of these three creatures. The queen, for example, is longer and smoother in appearance than the worker bee, while the drone is thicker than both and shorter than the queen; the queen has a curved, rather thick body, while the worker bee has a straight, slender body.