96 COMBS, AND THE FORM OF CELLS. 



Six shining panels gird each polish'd round, 

 The door's fine rim, with waxen fillet bound, 

 While walls so thin, with sister walls combined. 

 Weak in themselves, a sure dependence find.' 



Evans. 



There is also another difficulty which the bees get 

 over wonderfully. If the cells were made horizontal, 

 or at right angles to the middle partition, the honey 

 would run out, almost as fast as put in, and so what 

 the bees do is to make every cell slope a little in- 

 wards, and then, when the honey is put in, it is kept 

 there, partly by what is called capillary attraction, 

 and partly because, as they put in more and more, so 

 much the more do they build up the entrance, until 

 at last the cell is quite full. 



Once more, there is another, and apparently 

 serious difficulty which they meet with in comb- 

 building, — but which they soon surmount most in- 

 geniously, — arising from the drone-cells being larger 

 than the worker. The width of four drone cells put 

 together is one inch, which is the same as the width 

 of five worker cells, measured in the same way. Con- 

 sequently when drone-cells are built on by the side of 

 worker cells, there is a difficulty in making them all 

 fit together. Indeed it is impossible without contri- 

 vance and some alteration of shape. 



How the bees manage you will best understand 

 from the illustration of a piece of comb in a previous 

 chapter, at page 91. There you see the two kinds of 

 cells, the larger and smaller ; and then how the bees 

 make a few odd-shaped cells, which, being put in 

 between the large arid small cells, soon brings all 



