326 BRITISH BEES. 



pouch therein it is collected, thence to the second 

 stomach, and then on to the cysts or little bags which 

 run along on each side from the second to the fifth 

 ventral segments, and correspond and communicate with 

 eight trapezoidal depressions placed externally upon the 

 plates of the ventral segments four on each side, 

 through the concavity of which the secreted wax exudes 

 in a liquid, transparent, hot state, forming a thin scale 

 within each, which the air hardens into a white sub- 

 stance, as the pulp of paper is hardened upon the form 

 into which it is introduced, or like salt crystallizing into 

 flakes from sea- water in shallow salines. This, how- 

 ever, is not yet wax, although its essential constituent, 

 but to become so these scales are removed by the sco- 

 pulse of the posterior plantee and their auricle, to the 

 intermediate feet and by these transferred to the ante- 

 rior pair, which pass them to the mandibles, where they 

 are masticated and mixed with a saliva issuing from the 

 mouth, and thus intermingled they consolidate into a 

 white opaque mass, which issues from the mouth like a 

 thin strip of riband, and constitutes true wax, plastic to 

 their manipulation. To form this secretion, the bees 

 having collected the honey themselves in the first in- 

 stance, or having consumed sufficient before leaving the 

 hive with the swarm, but which they subsequently ob- 

 tain from the supplies stored in the present hive, hang 

 themselves in festoons in all directions about its cavitv, 



/ * 



each festoon being formed by two parallel chains of bees 

 clinging together ; the top bee on each side hangs by its 

 anterior claws to the top of the hive, and the next in 

 succession grasps with its fore claws the hind claws of 

 that and so on, until the depth of the festoon they find 

 to be sufficient, when the bottom bees of each chain swing 





