364 APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY 



occurs, the following may be regarded as an outline of the life of a bee 

 colony. 



Starting with a "swarm/' which consists of a laying queen a.nd a 

 mass of workers, which has left its former home, this swarm flies to a new 

 place in which to establish itself, such as a hollow tree. Here the workers 

 clean out the cavity, removing loose particles of wood and such other 

 debris as can be carried out. All cracks and openings to the exterior 

 except one or two, are then stopped up with Propolis, a dark-colored, 

 sticky material which the bees gather from the buds of trees, particularly 

 poplars where these trees occur, and carry to the nest in their pollen 

 baskets. 



The production of wax with which to make cells in which food is 

 stored and the brood raised, is next in order. To obtain this, some of 

 the workers feed freely and hang upon the walls of the nest but do no 

 work. Soon tiny scales of wax appear on the under side of the abdomens 

 of these workers, produced by wax glands along the inner side of the chi- 

 tinous wall of the body there, and poured out through openings leading 

 from these glands to the surface. This wax is gathered, worked over and 

 molded into the form of sheets of "comb," attached at their tops to 

 some part of the hive and hanging downward. Generally these sheets 

 are more or less parallel to each other and with only a narrow space left 

 between them when their construction has been completed. 



Each sheet of comb consists of two layers of cells back to back, each 

 cell being six-sided. The long axis of the cell is nearly at right angles to 

 the plane of the sheet of comb as a whole, but tipped slightly upward. 

 Comparing cells on the two sides of the comb it is seen that a cell of one 

 side backs against parts of three of the opposite side, and that the parti- 

 tion at the inner end of each cell slopes so that the center is its deepest 

 point. Mathematical study of the construction of the cells shows that 

 by this form and arrangement of the cells the greatest amount of storage 

 space is obtained with the least expenditure of wax, of any form which the 

 bees could use. In some of these cells, usually those around the top and 

 sides of the comb, food is stored, while the central and lower portions 

 are used for the production of the young. 



As soon as comb is available the storing of food and the production of 

 young begin. The workers go out and visit flowers, gathering the pollen 

 in their pollen baskets and bringing it to the nest where it is stored in 

 cells. They also collect nectar from the blossoms, carrying it to the nest 

 in the honey sac, an enlargement of the oesophagus just in front of the 

 stomach (Fig 24, hs) . On reaching the nest this nectar is expelled into a 

 cell and the cells selected for this purpose are gradually filled. From time 

 to time workers visit these cells and draw the nectar from them into their 

 honey sacs, then driving it back into the cell again and repeating the 

 process, which removes water from it and concentrates it into honey. 



