50 BEEKEEPING 



produce the wax out of which the combs 

 are built. It may seem a small task, but 

 from all appearances it is a time-consum- 

 ing affair. When this part of the work 

 is going on we can open a hive and find 

 clusters of bees festooned from comb to 

 comb in living ladders, each one clinging 

 to its neighbor. I do not know why they 

 assume this form during the process of 

 wax production, but they always do. The 

 wax itself is secreted from tiny plates on 

 the abdomen of the bees and as these plates 

 are formed they are detached by other 

 workers and molded into place as they are 

 needed in the new structure. Such wax is 

 nearly always of an almost snowy white- 

 ness and becomes yellow or brown only 

 after it has been tracked over by millions 

 of the tiny feet of the inhabitants. 



The drones are the males of the colony 

 and sometimes they are produced in a 

 wanton abundance that makes one ques- 

 tion whether the bees have any particular 

 wisdom or not, for the drone outside of 



