CHAPTER IX 



THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 



WATCHING the inner life of the hive in 

 the season of its full activity, it is not the 

 untiring spirit of industry pervading the 

 whole bee-commonwealth that most excites the 

 student's wonder, but rather the fact that this 

 ceaseless diligence finds so many outlets — that so 

 many different kinds of necessary work are going 

 forward at one and the same time. 



Between the brood-combs the nurses are feeding 

 the young larvae, or clearing out the empty cells, 

 or sealing over the full-grown nymphs for their 

 pre-natal slumber. Hard by, the sowers are at 

 their vital work, driving their living seed-barrow, 

 the queen, over the combs. Elsewhere the wax- 

 makers hang in a silent, densely packed cluster. 

 Overhead, the new honey-combs are growing ; 

 the masons building up the cell-walls, while the 

 engineers devise means and ends, calculate strains, 

 put in a strut here, a stay there, or flying buttress 

 from one comb to another, or cut new passage- 



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