THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 139 



fixed to its sides throughout, and though the cell 

 is otherwise carefully cleaned after the young bee 

 has vacated it, the cocoon is never interfered with, 

 but continues as a permanent lining to the cell. 

 The same thing occurs with all successive genera- 

 tions, each bee leaving her swaddling-clothes 

 behind her, until so great an accumulation occurs 

 that the cell becomes too small for breeding any 

 but a puny, undersized race. With wild bees, 

 where the nest has been constructed in a tree- 

 hollow, and there is usually plenty of surplus room, 

 the old brood-combs may be eventually abandoned 

 and fresh ones built farther on. Thus the stock 

 generally shifts its station from year to year. 

 These natural bee-nests, or bee-bikes, as country 

 people call them, often reach a great age. Some- 

 times a swarm will get under the rafters in a 

 house-roof, and may be left undisturbed for 

 generations. In one case bees were traditionally 

 supposed to have inhabited a blind loft in a farm- 

 house continuously for forty or fifty years. A 

 legend rife in the village credited them with 

 having stored many tons of honey, but when the 

 stock was sulphured little more than a vast 

 accumulation of comb was discovered. This comb 

 was of all ages, from a few weeks old to an 

 unconjecturable number of years. Much of it was 

 perfectly black, and the cells choked up with 

 pupa cocoons. 



The fact that egg-laying is continued in these 



