178 THE BEE-KEEPER'S MANUAL. 
are appropriated to the holding of honey or pollen, 
In this, as in everything else, the bees adapt their 
operations to circumstances; thus they construct their 
combs either by suspending them from the top of 
their dwelling, or occasionally by working them from 
the bottom upwards. 
The following details from Mi Shirley UHibberd’s 
‘Rustie Adornments’ may be acceptable to some of 
our readers :— 
“The combs, or elusters of cells, are arranged in 
vertical and parallel plates, with a space of about 
half an inch betwixt contiguous pairs; aud each 
comb is nearly an inch in thickness. At the outsct, 
when one wax-making bee leaves the suspended 
cluster alluded to, and lays the foundation of a cell, 
others follow in rapid succession, not only adding 
their wax to that of the first, but soon commencing 
new combs, one on cach side; and so the work goes 
on, in most cases until the whole roof is covered 
with foundations. The architects proper, also, are 
meanwhile at their finishing work. ‘They have,’ 
says Reaumur, ‘to solve this difficult geometrical 
problem: a quantity of wax beine given, to form 
of it similar and equal cells of a determinate ca- 
pacity, but of the largest size in proportion to 
the matter employed, and disposed in such a 
manner as to occupy the least possible space in the 
hive. Wonderful to reflect upon, this problem is 
solved by bees in all its conditions, in their 
construction of hexagonal or six-sided cells. The 
square and the equilateral triangle are the only 
other two figures of cells which could make them 
