144 INSECT ARTIZANS AND THEIR WORK 



one, and so on in the same manner until two 

 hanging chains of bees are formed. Then the two 

 bottom ones cause the chains to swing until they 

 can hook their hinder feet together to form a 

 festoon. So they hang for about twenty-four 

 hours, when the festoon breaks up and the bees 

 which composed it resort to the cell-makers and 

 supply them with the material for their work. 



When the wax-secreting worker has brought the 

 thin plates from the abdominal rings to her jaws 

 and manipulated them into true bee's-wax as we 

 know it, it issues from the mouth as a thin strip 

 which is brought to the cell-makers and applied 

 by them to the walls of the cells now under con- 

 struction, a work that is carried on with great 

 rapidity. 



A considerable amount of honey is converted 

 into only a small quantity of wax, and therefore 

 the workers use it with parsimony. There is no 

 waste, and they have learned to make the maximum 

 structure out of the minimum of material. That 

 is the reason for the six-sided shape of the cell. 

 All the solitary bees, as we have shown, make their 

 burrows cylindrical, based upon the form of their 

 bodies, or at least of the body revolved on its own 

 axis, as they have to revolve in finishing off their 

 excavation. 



Now, though the hexagonal cell admirably fits 

 the cylindrical body of the bee-grub, it cannot be 

 modelled upon the body of the worker bee. If 

 the individual cells of the bee-comb were fashioned 



