AFFECTION FOR THE YOUNG. 527 



old abode can no longer retain them, a great portion of the neuters, led 

 by a single female, migrates or swarms, and proceeds to form a new 

 colony. This swarming is repeated several times even in one hive, 

 which may thus give rise to as many as four other colonies. The first 

 swarm quits it about the middle of May, and the following ones from 

 week to week, until the middle of June. The first that migrate consist 

 chiefly of the older inhabitants of the hive, and their queen is also the 

 old one who had hybernated with them ; the subsequent swarms are 

 led by young impregnated females. The swarm quitting the parent 

 hive has at first no dwelling place, but the queen, after a short flight, 

 settles at some spot, and all the workers accompanying her do the same 

 around her ; single neuters now fly forth to seek a place which the 

 swarm can inhabit. They in general select for that purpose hollow 

 trees, or other dry situations that they may meet with ; when such a 

 cavity is found the entire swarm, with the queen, immediately occupy 

 it. So soon as the swarm has taken formal possession of the dwelling 

 the neuters commence their labours: they first investigate all the 

 entrances, and close all excepting one, which forms the true entrance, 

 which is in general of but small compass, but which is decreased to the 

 requisite size if it be too large. The material with which they close the 

 entrances, and also cover the interior surface of the cavity, is called 

 propolis, metys, pissoceros ; it is a resinous substance, which they 

 collect from the clammy and resinous buds of the birch, the sallow, 

 poplars, chestnuts, &c : it differs from wax by its peculiar balsamic 

 smell, by its combustibleness, and its resinous components. They do 

 not appear to prepare it, but apply it to their purpose just as they find 

 it. Their second building material, but of which the cells alone are 

 made, is wax, which is a peculiar secretion of the bees ; of the organs 

 which prepare it we have before spoken. The tablets secreted between 

 the ventral segments are removed as soon as a bee wishes to build, then 

 crumbled and dissolved by means of the alkaline saliva into a pap, 

 when it is applied to the construction of the cells. These cells they 

 do not construct like the wasps and humble bees, in horizontal combs, 

 but in perpendicular ones, which run from the summit of their dwelling 

 to its base ; both sides also of these combs are occupied by cells, and not, 

 as in the former insects, the lower side only. The cells are of a roundish, 

 slightly hexagonal form, and terminate at their base in triangular points 

 bordered by indistinct rhomboidal surfaces, each of which borders a 

 third of the opposite cell : thus each cell rests upon three of the oppo- 



