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 
