84 ANIMALS AND INSECTS 



have to work fast to keep up with her. They must 

 make wax and they must make the httle cells out of 

 the wax. They must gather the honey and the 

 pollen and store it away. Then they must make real 

 honey out of what is brought in from the flowers, by 

 standing and fanning it with their wings. And they 

 must mix the pollen with a little honey to make 

 bee-bread of it. The workers can have only bee- 

 bread to eat, but the queen must always have a 

 special kind of honey. 



The little babies when they hatch from the eggs 

 must be taken care of and fed, and when they are 

 ready to come out of their rooms they must be 

 helped out. Then they must be carefully tended 

 just as the ant babies are tended by their little 

 nurses. The bee nurses are just as careful as the 

 ant nurses. They help the baby out, they smooth 

 the tin}^ crumpled wings, and they straighten out 

 the six little folded legs. They wash the baby by 

 licking it with their tongues just as a mother cat 

 washes her kittens; they comb the baby's hairy body 

 with the combs they carry on their legs, and they 

 feed it with drops of honey. After all this nursing 

 the baby is considered a baby no longer; and just 

 as the ant baby turns into a nurse, so the bee baby, 

 after she has been washed and combed and fed, 

 begins to help the nurses with the other babies. 

 After she has nursed awhile she is allowed to go out 

 and get honey. 



But the work of the bee city is not half told yet. 

 As soon as the babies have left their rooms, bees 

 come hurrying up to clean out the little cell so the 



