II Live nIsSvORVOF BOMBUS a7 
9 
unbroken, but as the larve grow, &. terrestris, 
lucorum, and latrezllellus \eave visible holes in the 
wax, which, when the larve approach full size, become 
large. The larve would now run the risk of falling 
out of their soft wax covering, which would mean 
their destruction, for a naked larva is always carried 
out of the nest; but they avoid this danger by en- 
closing themselves in a loose web of silk, doing this 
a day or two before they begin to spin their cocoons. 
A larva that happens to lie underneath a large 
number of others generally has to build its cocoon 
almost horizontally, so that the end through which 
the perfect bee will escape may be free. Such a 
larva often fails to obtain a sufficient supply of 
food, with the result that it does not grow to full 
size and develops into a small bee. In this way 
tiny workers—I have seen some no larger than a 
house-fly—are sometimes produced, particularly in 
the nests of the carder-bees, who do not feed their 
young with such care as the underground species. 
If the worker is much undersized, her wings are 
almost sure to be malformed, so that she is never 
able to leave the nest. 
The workers do not continue to use the queen's 
honey-pot, but, leaving it to grow mouldy and decay, 
they store the honey they gather in the cocoons they 
have vacated, adding wax to the rims of these to 
increase their capacity. They also, when the cells 
are full, reduce the size of their mouths with wax. 
The carder-bees, which produce little wax, usually 
rely entirely on these vacated cocoons for the storage 
