4-86 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



not only much larger than any of the rest, but of a quite 

 different form, being shaped like a pear or Florence 

 flask, and composed of a material much coarser than 

 common wax, of which above one hundred times as 

 much is used in its construction as of pure wax in that 

 of a common cell. The situation, too, of these cells (for 

 there are generally three or four, and sometimes many 

 more, even up to thirty or forty, in each hive) is very 

 different from that of the common cells. Instead of 

 being in a horizontal they are placed in a vertical direc- 

 tion, with the mouth downwards, and are usually fixed 

 to the lower edge of the combs, from which they irre- 

 gularly project like stalactites from the roof of a cavern. 

 The cells destined for the reception of honey and 

 pollen, differ from those which the larvae of the males 

 and workers inhabit, only, by being deeper, and thus 

 more capacious ; in fact, the very same cells are succes- 

 sively applied to both purposes. When the honey is 

 collected in great abundance, and there is not time to 

 construct fresh cells, the bees lengthen the honey cells 

 by adding a rim to them. 



You will be anxious to learn the process which these 

 ingenious artificers follow in constructing their habita- 

 tions : and on this head I am happy that the recent pub- 

 lication of a new edition of the celebrated Huber's New 

 Observations on Bees, in which this subject is for the first 

 time elucidated, will enable me to gratify your curiosity. 



But in the first place you must be told of an important 

 and unlooked-for discovery of this unrivalled detector of 

 the hidden mysteries of nature that the workers or neu- 

 ters, as they are called, of a hive, consist of two descrip- 

 tions of individuals, one of which he calls abeilles nour- 



