HIVE-BEES. 113 



there are waiters always attending, who serve them 

 with provisions when they require them. The labourer 

 who has an appetite, bends down his trunk before the 

 caterer, to intimate that he has an inclination to eat, 

 upon which the other opens his bag of honey, and 

 pours out a fe\v drops j these may be distinctly seen 

 rolling through the whole of his trunk, which in- 

 sensibly swells in every part the liquor flows through. 

 When this little repast is over, the labourer returns to 

 his work, and his body and feet repeat the same mo- 

 tions as before,* 



Before they can commence building, however, 

 when a colony or swarm migrates from the original 

 hive to a new situation, it is necessary first to collect 

 propolis, with which every chink and cranny in the 

 place where they mean to build may be carefully 

 stopped up; and secondly that a qnantity of wax be 

 secreted by the wax-workeis to form the requisite 

 cells. The secretion of wax, it would appear, goes 

 on best when the bees are in a state of repose; and 

 the wax-workers, accordingly, suspend themselves 

 in the interior in an extended cluster, like a curtain 

 which is composed of a series of intertwined festoons 

 or garlands, crossing each other in all directions, — 

 the uppermost bee maintaining its position by laying 

 hold of the roof with its fore-legs, and the succeeding 

 one by laying hold of the hind legs of the first. 



^^ A person," says Reaumur, ''must have been 

 born devoid of curiosity not to take interest in the 

 investigation of such wonderful proceedings." Yet 

 Reaumur himself seems not to have understood that 

 the bees suspended themselves in this manner to 

 secrete wax, but merely, as he imagined, to recruit 

 themselves by rest for renewing their labours. The 

 bees composing the festooned curtain are individu- 

 ally motionless; but this curtain is, notwithstanding, 



* Spectacle de la Nature, torn. i. 

 VOL. IV. 10* 



