THE BEE. 105 



When the bees perceive that it has no further 

 occasion for feeding, they perform the last offices 

 of tenderness, and shut the little animal up in its 

 cell, walling up the mouth of its apartment with 

 wax ; there they leave the worm to itself, having 

 secured it from every external injury. 



The worm is no sooner left enclosed, but, from 

 a state of inaction, it begins to labour, extending 

 and shortening its body ; and by this means lin- 

 ing the walls of its apartment with a silken tapes- 

 try, which it spins in the manner of caterpillars 

 before they undergo their last transformation. 

 When their cell is thus prepared, the animal is 

 soon after transformed into an aurelia ; but dif- 

 fering from that of the common caterpillar, as it 

 exhibits not only the legs, but the wings of the 

 future bee, in its present state of inactivity. 

 Thus, in about twenty or one-and-twenty days 

 after the egg was laid, the bee is completely 

 formed, and fitted to undergo the fatigues of its 

 state. When all its parts have acquired their 

 proper strength and consistence, the young ani- 

 mal opens its prison, by piercing with its teeth 

 the waxen door that confines it. W T hen just 

 free^ from its cell, it is as yet moist, and incom- 

 moded with the spoils of its former situation : 

 but the officious bees are soon seen to flock 

 round it, and to lick it clean on all sides with 

 their trunks ; while another band, with equal 

 assiduity, are observed to feed it with honey; 

 others again begin immediately to cleanse the 

 cell that has been just left, to carry the ordures 

 out of the hive, and to fit the place for a new in- 



