HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 31 X 



successively applied to both purposes. When the honey is collected in 

 great abundance, and there is not time to construct fresh cells, the bees 

 lengthen the honey cells by adding a rim to them. 



You will be anxious to learn the process which these ingenious artificers 

 follow in constructing their habitations: and on this head I am happy that 

 the recent publication of a new edition of the celebrated Huber's New 

 Observations on Bees, in which this subject is for the first time elucidated, 

 will enable me to gratify your curiosity. 



But in the first place you must be told of an important and unlooked- 

 for discovery of this unrivalled detector of the hidden mysteries of 

 nature — that the workers or neuters, as they are called, of a hive, consist 

 of two descriptions of individuals, one of which he calls abeilles nour- 

 rices, or petites abeilles, the other abeilles cirieres. The former, or 7iurse 

 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 founda- 

 tion has been laid by the cirieres, to collect honey, and to feed the larvae. 

 The abeilles cirieres are the makers of wax, which substance Huber has 

 now indisputably ascertained to be secreted, as John Hunter long ago 

 suspected, 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- 

 pockets, situated at the base of each intermediate segment, one on each 

 side, which can only be seen by pressing the abdomen so as to lengthen 

 it, being usually concealed by the overlapping of the preceding segments. 

 It should be observed that this discovery was nearly made by our countryman 

 Thorley, who, in his Female Monarchy (1744), 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 laminas. 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, suspend themselves to each other, 

 the claws of the forelegs of the lowermost being attached to those of the 

 hind pair of the uppermost, and form themselves into a cluster, the exte- 

 rior layer of which looks like a kind of curtain. This cluster consists of 

 a series of festoons or garlands, which cross each other in all directions, 

 and in which most of the bees turn their back upon the observer: the 

 curtain has no other motion than what it receives from the interior layers, 

 the fluctuations of which are communicated to it. All this time the nurse- 

 bees preserve their wonted activity and pursue their usual employments. 

 The wax-makers remain immoveable for about twenty-four hours, during 

 which period the formation of wax takes place, and thin laminae of this 

 material may be generally perceived under their abdomen. One of these 

 bees is now seen to detach itself from one of the central garlands of the 

 cluster, to make a way amongst its companions to the middle of the vault 



