HYMENOPTERA. 327 
stores of honey and pollen. This is brought, as we have already 
said, in the form of pellets, in the baskets which the hind-legs 
form. The working bee, when it has gathered it, pushes it into 
the cell, pressing it in with its hind-legs. Another then arrives, 
and kneads up the mass to make it adhesive. The bee brings the 
honey in its first stomach, and disgorges it into one of the cells 
where it is to be kept. However, it is not always by carrying 





Fig. 319.—Interior of a Hive. 
its honey into a cell that the worker is relieved of it, often finding 
an opportunity to deliver it on the way. 
“When it meets,” says Réaumur,* “any of its companions 
who want food, and who have not had time to go and get any, it 
stops, erects and stretches out its trunk, so that the opening by 
which the honey may be taken out is a little way beyond the man- 
dibles. It pushes the honey towards this opening. The other 
bees, who know well enough that it is from there they must take 
it, introduce the end of their trunks and suck it up. The bee 
which has not been stopped on its road, often goes to the places 
where other bees are working, that is, to those places where 
* “ Mémoires pour servir 4 |’ Histoire des Insectes,” tome v., p. 449. 
