228 THE BEE FOUNDRESS. 



delightful pages. There will be found in detail, ample and 

 accurate, how that, as a first preparatory step towards the 

 construction of a comb, the bees (called Wax- workers) suspend 

 themselves, from the empty interior of the hive, in neck- 

 lace-like festoons, and thus remain motionless for hours 

 together, apparently to rest, but in reality to secrete the 

 wax which becomes visible on the rings of their bodies; 

 how that, in step the second, the Bee foundress leaves the 

 group, clears herself a space, goes to work alone (hundreds of 

 spectators watching her proceedings), gathers from off her 

 body, kneads with her mouth, then deposits the first portion of 

 wax, in other words lays the foundation of the waxen city ; 

 how this conspicuous individual, then retiring, leaves a second 

 bee to imitate her example; then, in succession, a third and 

 fourth, and so on, till a block or wall of wax is formed at top 

 of the domed hive ; how, subsequently, the shapeless mass 

 thus accumulated is excavated and moulded into honey-comb 

 cells, those admirable solutions of that difficult geometric 

 problem which requires "A quantity of wax being given to 

 form thereof similar and equal cells of a determinate capacity, 

 but of the largest size in proportion to the quantity of matter 

 employed, and disposed in such a manner as to occupy the least 

 possible space." These conditions are exactly fulfilled in the 

 six-sided cell of a bee, which is of a shape also the best adapted 

 to its body. 



Plenty of the worldly wise are disposed, doubtless, to look 

 upon the study of bees, or of any such small people, as 

 altogether foolishness. 



Some there are (though not we hope amongst our 

 readers) with whom the tastes and pursuits of the wise and 

 good weigh as nothing, and with whom the intrinsic interest 

 attached to natural objects (could they even be forced to their 

 study) would go for nothing too. These have no minds for 

 the common wonderful no hearts for the natural poetic, with 

 both of which the works and ways of bees, and of insects in 

 general, are fully fraught. 



