100 HISTORY OF 



titions being lined six or eight deep, become at 

 last too narrow for a new brood, and are convert- 

 ed into store-houses for honey. 



Those cells where nothing but honey is depo- 

 sited, are much deeper than the rest. When the 

 harvest of honey is so plentiful that they have 

 not sufficient room for it, they either lengthen 

 their combs, or build more, which are much 

 longer than the former. Sometimes they work at 

 three combs at a time j for when there are three 

 work-houses, more bees may be thus employed, 

 without embarrassing each other. 



But honey, as was before observed, is not the 

 only food upon which these animals subsist. The 

 meal of flowers, of which their wax is formed, is 

 one of their most favourite repasts. This is a diet 

 which they live upon during the summer, and of 

 which they lay up a large winter provision. The 

 wax of which their combs are made is no more 

 than this meal digested, and wrought into a paste. 

 When the flowers upon which bees generally feed 

 are not fully blown, and this meal or dust is not 

 offered in sufficient quantities, the bees pinch the 

 tops of the stamina in which it is contained with 

 their teeth, and thus anticipate the progress of 

 vegetation. In April and May the bees are busy 

 from morning to evening in gathering this meal j 

 but when the weather becomes too hot in the 

 midst of summer, they work only in the morning. 



The bee is furnished with a stomach for its 

 wax, as well as its honey. In the former of the 

 two, their powder is altered, digested, and con- 

 cocted into real wax, and is thus ejected by the 



