EEE. 
343 
be put into this cell ; so that the honey is laid into 
this last silken bag. How often they may breed 
in the same cell I do not know, but I have known 
them three times in the same season; each time 
the excrement has been accumulating, and the cell 
has been lined three times with silk. From this 
account we must see that a cell, in time, will be 
so far fdled up as to render it unfit for breeding. 
On separating the lining of silk, which is easiest 
done at the bottom, on account of the dried excre- 
ment between each lining, I have counted above 
twenty different linings in one cell, and found the 
cell about one quarter, or one third, filled up; 
when such a cell, or a piece of comb with such 
cells, is steeped in water, so as to soften the ex- 
crement between the linings, they are separated 
from each other at the bottom by the swelling of 
the excrement, so that they can be easily counted. 
A piece of comb so circumstanced, when boiled 
for the wax, muII keep its form, and the small 
quantity of wax is squeezed out at different parts, 
as if squeezed out of a sponge, and runs together 
into the crevices: while a piece of comb, that 
never has been bred in, even of the same hive, 
melts almost wholly down. It is this wax that 
has the fine yellow, while the other of the same 
hives, although brown, yet shall be white when 
melted; so that I was led to imagine the wax 
took its tinge from the farina, excrement, &c. but 
upon boiling pure wax wdth such materials, it 
was not tinged with this transparent yellow, only 
became dirty. In some of those cells that had 
