526 The Outline of Science 



returns to earth, and now there is the morrow to consider and a 

 new home has to be built. Scouts go out, and when they have 

 found a suitable site the workers at once begin to fashion a new 

 comb, in which the queen lays eggs, and so a new city springs 

 up. The hexagonal cells of the comb are made of thin plates 

 of pliable wax, which comes from little pockets on the bee's 

 abdomen. To start the secretion of the wax great heat is needed, 

 so the bees gather together in a great pendant mass till "a 

 strange sweat, white as snow and airier than the down of a wing, 

 is beginning to break over the swarm." The worker bee removes 

 the wax scales from her body with a pair of pincers she has at 

 one of her knee joints, and then chews them into a soft paste 

 which can be moulded into the delicate fabric of the cells. 



Honeycomb 



The bees' comb is one of the wonders of the world. In spite 

 of its extraordinary fragility it is able to suspend a weight thirty 

 times as great as its own. A small block of wax attached to the 

 roof of the hive makes the foundation, from which the layers of 

 cells grow out downwards and sideways, leaving a gangway for 

 the streams of bees to pass to and fro. The usual shape of the 

 cells is hexagonal, individually well suited for the cylindrical 

 body of a grub, together ideally constructed to prevent waste of 

 space. But bees adapt themselves to unusual circumstances and 

 build triangular, square, or other cells in odd corners if the need 

 arises. The cells are not quite horizontally placed, having a 

 slight upward tilt which prevents the spilling of thin honey. 

 Extreme delicacy of touch is required in the moulding of the 

 plastic wax, for the 1-180 part of an inch is the thickness of the 

 tissue-paper-like cell-walls. 



The Nuptial Flight 



While the new colony is rapidly growing up, life continues 

 in the old hive; it is, in fact, about to renew its youth. One of 



