76 Insect Architecture. 



by a solitary female who has outlived the winter, she trans- 

 ports her little bundles of moss or grass by successive back- 

 ward pushes, till she gets them home. 



In the latter part of the season, when the hive is populous 

 and can afford more hands, there is an ingenious division of 

 this labour. A file of bees, to the number sometimes of 

 half a dozen, is established, from the ndfet to the moss or 

 grass which they intend to use, the heads of all the file of 

 bees being turned from the nest and towards the material. 

 The last bee of the file lays hold of some of the moss with 

 her mandibles, disentangles it from the rest, and having 

 carded it with her fore legs into a sort of felt or small 

 bundle, she pushes it under her body to the next bee, who 

 passes it in the same manner to the next, and so on till it 

 is brought to the border of the nest, in the same way as 

 we sometimes see sugar-loaves conveyed from a cart to a 

 warehouse, by a file of porters throwing them from one to 

 another. 



The elevation of the dome, which is all built from the 

 interior, is from four to six inches above the level of the 

 field. Beside the moss or grass, they frequently employ 

 coarse wax to form the ceiling of the vault, for the purpose 

 of keeping out rain, and preventing high winds from destroy- 

 ing it. Before this finishing is given to the nest, we have 

 remarked, that on a fine sunshiny day the upper portion of 

 the dome was opened to the extent of more than an inch, in 

 order, we suppose, to forward the hatching of the eggs in the 

 interior ; but on the approach of night this was carefully 

 covered in again. It was remarkable that the opening which 

 we have just mentioned was never used by the bees for either 

 their entrance or their exit from the nest, though they were 

 all at work there, and, of course, would have found it the 

 readiest and easiest passage ; but they invariably made their 

 exit and their entrance through the covert-way or ' gallery 

 which opens at the bottom of the nest, and, in some nests, is 

 about a foot long and half an inch wide. This is, no doubt, 

 intended for concealment from field-mice, polecats, wasps, and 

 other depredators. 



