THE BEE. 



lay the eggs of males, the workers appear to know it, and act 

 accordingly. When there is a very large harvest of honey, the 

 bees increase the diameter and even the length of their cells. At 

 this time many irregular combs may be seen with cells of twelve, 

 fifteen, and even eighteen lines in length. Sometimes, also, they 

 have occasion to shorten the cells. When they wish to lengthen an 

 old comb, the sides of which have acquired their full dimensions, 

 they gradually diminish the thickness of its edges, gnawing down 

 the sides of the cells till it assumes the lenticular form ; they 

 then engraft a mass of wax round it, and so proceed with new 

 cells." * 



89. The number of cells contained in the combs of a well- 

 stocked hive is considerable. In a hive twenty inches high and 

 fourteen inches diameter, they often amount to forty or fifty 

 thousand. A piece of comb, measuring fourteen inches long and 

 seven inches wide, containing about 4000 cells, is frequently con- 

 structed in twenty-four hours. 



90. Nothing can be more admirable than the tender solicitude 

 and foresight shown by the bee towards its offspring. Although 

 these insects provide a great number of cells, as storehouses, for the 

 honey intended for the use of the community, yet the object which 

 more exclusively engrosses them is the care of their young, to the 

 provision and rearing of which they sacrifice all personal and 

 selfish considerations. In a new swarm, accordingly, the first 

 care of these insects is to construct cradles for their young, and 

 the next, to provide an ample store of a peculiar sort of pap, 

 called bee-bread, for their food. 



This bee-bread consists of the pollen of flowers, which the 

 workers at this time are incessantly employed in gathering, flying 

 from flower to flower, brushing from the stamens their yellow 

 treasure, which they collect in the little baskets with which their 

 hind-legs are so admirably provided. They then hasten back to 

 the hive, where, having deposited the store thus collected, they 

 return to seek a new load. 



Another troop of labourers are in constant attendance in the 

 hive to receive the stock of bee-bread thus collected, which they 

 carefully store up until such time as the queen has laid her eggs. 

 These eggs she places in an upright position in the bottoms of the 

 cells, where they are severally hatched. 



91. The bee-bread is converted into a sort of pap, or whitish 

 jelly, by being swallowed by the bee, in the stomach of which it is 

 probably mixed with honey and then regurgitated. 



The moment the young brood issue from the eggs in the state of 

 larvae, they are diligently fed with this jelly by the class of bees 



* Kirby, i. 419. 

 42 



