BEES. 115 



of the same size ; some are used as cradles wherein the young are lodged, 

 while others are filled with honey and the pollen of flowers. Some of the 

 honey-cells are left open, others, used as a reserve, are carefully closed with a 

 lid of wax. The royal cells, varying from two to forty in each hive, are much 

 larger than the rest, and are suspended, like stalactites, from the margins of 

 the combs. 



The cells provided for the males are intermediate in their dimensions be- 

 tween these and those constructed for the reception of the young labourers. 

 As the bees invariably build them from above downwards, those at the bottom 

 are always the last constructed. 



The queen-bee begins to lay her eggs in early summer, and continues to do 

 so at intervals till the close of autumn. Reaumur has estimated that she will 

 sometimes lay twelve thousand eggs in the course of twenty days. Guided by 

 an unerring instinct, she never makes a mistake in choosing the cells proper 

 to receive her different kinds of eggs. Those laid in early spring always give 



FIG. 113. PI/PA. 

 FIG. in. HONEYCOMB, WITH MALE, WORKER, AND ROYAL CELLS. 



birth to working bees ; they are hatched in the course of four or five days, and 

 the young larva? are at once taken care of by the nursing bees, and provided 

 with food adapted to their condition. Six or seven days after their birth they 

 dispose themselves to undergo their metamorphosis. Shut up in their cells by 

 their nurses, who close the opening with a lid of wax, they line the walls of 

 their narrow dwelling with a tapestry of silk, in which they spin a cocoon, 

 become nymphs, and after about twelve days of seclusion, issue forth as work- 

 ing bees, already taught by their Divine instructor how at once to set about 

 their various avocations. The eggs from which the males are produced are 

 not laid till two months later, and shortly afterwards those which give birth 

 to females are deposited. 



The Humble Bees (Bombus) are well known to every schoolboy. Many 

 of them dwell underground, or in moss-covered nests, where they live together 

 in colonies, varying from sixty to two hundred or three hundred in number. 



Hugh Miller thus shortly describes the principal species of humble bees : 

 "When a boy at Cromarty," says that elegant writer, "the wild honey-bees in 

 their several species had peculiar charms for us. There were the buff- coloured 

 carders^ that erected over their honey-jars domes of moss ; the lapidary, red- 

 tipped bees, that built amidst the recesses of ancient cairns, and in old dry 



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