96 THE BUILDING OF BEES. 



' ' During the active storing of the past season, especially when 

 comb building was in rapid progress, I found that nearly every 

 bee taken from the flowers contained wax scales of varying 

 sizes in the wax-pockets." — (A. J. Cook.) 



204. The first condition indispensable for bees to pro- 

 duce wax, is to have the stomach well filled. 



It is an interesting fact that honey-gathering and comb- 

 building go on simultaneously; so that when one stops, the 

 other ceases also. As soon as the honey harvest begins to 

 fail, so that consumption is in advance of production, the 

 bees cease to build new comb, even though large portions of 

 their hive are unfilled. When honey no longer abounds in the 

 fields, it is wisely ordered that they should not consume, in 

 comb-building, the treasures which may be needed for Winter 

 use. What safer rule could have been given them? 



It takes about twenty-four hours for a bee's food to be- 

 come transformed into wax. 



205. "Having filled themselves with honey, they gather in 

 chains; not in a single group, but in a number of groups, hang- 

 ing in a parallel curtain, in the direction of the comb to be 

 conf'tructed. Thus a bee clings to the ceiling with her claws, 

 or the sticky rubber of her feet, her posterior limbs hanging 

 down; another bee grapples the claws of these posterior feet, 

 with the claws of her anterior limbs, letting her hind limbs 

 hang also, to be grappled by a third, and so on, till the first 

 chain meets another, and both united form an arch, top down- 

 ward. This single chain becomes compound when several are 

 in the same line, and grouped near one another." — (Sartori 

 and Eausehenfels, " L 'Apicoltura in Italia," Milan, 1S7S.) 



206.1 "If we examine the bees closely during the season of 

 comb-building and honey-gathering, we shall find many of them 

 with the wax scales protruding between the rings that form the 

 body, and these scales are either picked from their bodies, or 

 from the bottom of the hive or honey boxes in which they are 

 building. If a bee is obliged to carry one of these wax scales 

 but a short distance, he takes it in his mandibles, and looks as 

 business-like with it thus, as a carpenter with a board on his 

 shoulder. If he has to carry it from the bottom of the honey- 



(1) In this witty quotation, the worker should have been In the feminine 

 and not in the masculine, 



