HABITATIONS OF IN.SECTS. 487 



rices, or petites abeilles, the other abeilles cirieres. — The 

 former, or nurse-bees, are smaller than the latter; their 

 stomach is not capable of such distention ; and their 

 office is to build the combs and cells after the foundation 

 has been laid by the cirieres ; to collect honey ; and to 

 feed the larvse. The abeilles ciriei-es are the makers of 

 wax, which substance Iluber has now indisputably as- 

 certained to be secreted, as John Hunter long ago sus- 

 pected, beneath the ventral segments, from between which 

 it is taken by the bees when wanted, in the form of thin 

 scales. The apparatus in which the wax is secreted 

 consists of four pair of membranous bags or 'wax-pockeis 

 situated at the base of each intermediate segment, one on 

 each side, which can only be seen by pressing the abdo- 

 men so as to lengthen it, being usually concealed by the 

 over-lapping of the preceding segments. It should be 

 observed that this discovery was nearly made by our 

 countryman Thorley, who in his Female Monarchy ( 1 744) 

 says that he has taken bees with six pieces of wax within 

 the plaits of the abdomen, three on each side. In these 

 pockets the wax is secreted by some unknown process 

 from the food taken into the stomach, which in the wax- 

 making bees is much larger than in the nurse-bees, and 

 afterwards transpires through the membrane of the wax- 

 pocket in thin laminae. The nurse-bees, however, do 

 secrete wax, but in very small quantities. — When wax 

 is not wanted in the hive, the wax-makers disgorge their 

 honey into the cells. 



The process of building the combs in a bee-hive, as 

 observed by Huber, is as follows : 



The wax-makers having taken a due portion of honey 

 or sugar, from either of which wax can be elaborated, 



