Hive-Bees. 157 



are built, the walls begin to stoop by degrees, they nod with 

 age, and bend from their perpendicular ; lodgers damage 

 everything, and time is continually introducing some new 

 decay. The mansions of the bees, on the contrary, grow 

 stronger the oftener they change inhabitants. Every bee- 

 grub, before its metamorphosis into a nymph, fastens its skin 

 to the partitions of its cell, but in such a manner as to make 

 it correspond with the lines of the angle, and without in the 

 least disturbing the regularity of the figure. During sum- 

 mer, accordingly, the same lodging may serve for three or 

 four grubs in succession ; and in the ensuing season it may 

 accommodate an equal number. Each grub never fails to 

 fortify the panels of its chamber by arraying them with its 

 spoils, and the contiguous cells receive a similar augment- 

 ation from its brethren.* Eeaumur found as many as seven 

 or eight of these skins spread over one another : so that all 

 the cells being incrusted with six or seven coverings, well 

 dried and cemented with propolis, the whole fabric daily 

 acquires a new degree of solidity. 



It is obvious, however, that by a repetition of this process 

 the cell might be rendered too contracted ; but in such a 

 case the bees know well how to proceed, by turning the cells 

 to other uses, such as magazines for bee-bread and honey. 

 It has been remarked, however, that in the hive of a new 

 swarm, during the months of July and August, there are 

 fewer small bees or nurse-bees than in one that has been 

 tenanted four or five years. The workers, indeed, clean out 

 the cell the moment that a young bee leaves its cocoon, but 

 they never detach the silky film which it has previously spun 

 on the walls of its cell. But though honey is deposited after 

 the young leave the cells, the reverse also happens ; and 

 accordingly, when bees are bred in contracted cells, they 

 are by necessity smaller, and constitute, in fact, the im- 

 portant class of nurse-bees. 



We are not disposed, however, to go quite so far as an 

 American periodical writer, who says, " Thus we see that 

 the contraction of the cell may diminish the size of a bee, 



* Spectacle de la Nature, vol. i. 



