APIS. 327 



themselves together, and cling to each other in the same 

 manner by their hind claws only. These festoons are 

 speedily suspended, and' with a fresh swarm are in im- 

 mediate active operation. The secretion requires about 

 twenty-four hours to complete, and as this is accom- 

 plished the festoons break up, and these secreters convey 

 it to where the sculpturer bees or builders are moulding 

 the cells, to whom it is successively supplied by the 

 secreters themselves as wanted, for none is stored, al- 

 though the wax of old or dilapidated parts of the hive, or 

 of the vacated cells of the new-bom queens are recon- 

 verted to use. These builders are very rapid in their 

 construction of the hexagonal cells, which, as they are 

 progressively completed, are stored with honey, this 

 being during the time assiduously gathered by the honey 

 collectors, and these cells are interspersed occasionally 

 with those wherein pollen or propolis is stored, each of 

 which, as the bees collecting them successively return, 

 is cast into the selected cell by the bee collecting it, who 

 returns at once to the same employment, whilst the 

 store thus deposited is immediately compactly pressed in 

 and warehoused by other bees who fulfil that duty, or 

 who cover it in when the cells are filled, with a waxen 

 covercle formed of concentric circles ; or, in the case of 

 the honey-cells, to keep the thickened operculum de- 

 posited upon it in due position and repair, after the re- 

 tiring of the bee which brought home the fresh store of 

 honey, and which had displaced it to regurgitate her 

 addition into the cell. This operculum or cover is of a 

 thicker consistency than the honey itself, and prevents 

 its oozing from the cells, which would often take place 

 from their uniformly horizontal position, were it not for 

 the sagacity which prompts them to introduce this pre-. 



