376 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



in view the accommodation of their young ones ; and to 

 these their cells are exclusively devoted. Bees, on the 

 contrary, (I am speaking of the common hive-bee,) ap- 

 propriate a considerable number of their cells to the re- 

 ception of honey intended for the use of the society. Yet 

 the education of the young brood is their chief object, 

 and to this they constantly sacrifice all personal and self- 

 ish considerations. In a new swarm the first care is to 

 build a series of cells to serve as cradles ; and little or 

 no honey is collected until an ample store of bee-bread, 

 as it is called, has been laid up for their food. This bee- 

 bread is composed of the pollen of flowers, which the 

 workers are incessantly employed in gathering, flying 

 from flower to flower, brushing from the stamens their 

 yellow treasure, and collecting it in the little baskets with 

 which their hind legs are so admirably provided ; then 

 hastening to the hive, and having deposited their booty, 

 returning for a new load. The provision thus furnished 

 by one set of labourers is carefully stored up by another, 

 until the eggs which the queen-bee has laid, and which 

 adhering by a glutinous covering she places nearly up- 

 right in the bottom of the cell, are hatched. With this 

 bee-bread after it has undergone a conversion into a sort 

 of whitish jelly by being received into the bee's stomach, 

 where it is probably mixed with honey a and regurgitated, 

 the young brood immediately upon their exclusion, and 

 until their change into nymphs, are diligently fed by 

 other bees, which anxiously attend upon them and seve- 

 ral times a day afford a fresh supply. Different bees are 



a It is not unlikely that it may undergo some other alteration in 

 the bee's stomach, which may possibly secrete some peculiar sub- 

 stance, as John Hunter discovered that the crop of the pigeon does. 



