98 THE BUILDING OF BEES. 



kind at all. Another follows after him sooner or later, and 

 gives the wax a pinch, or a little scraping or burnishing with his 

 polished mandibles, then another, and so on, and the sum total 

 of all these manoeuvres is that the comb seems almost to grow 

 out of nothing; yet no bee ever makes a cell himself, and no 

 comb building is ever done by any bee while standing in a 

 cell; neither do the bees ever stand in rows and 'excavate,' or 

 any thing of the kind. 



"The finished comb is the result of the united efforts of the 

 moving, restless mass, and the great mystery is, that anything 

 so wonderful can ever result at all, from such a mixed-up, skip- 

 ping-about way of working, as they seem to have. 



' ' When the cells are built out only part way, they are filled 

 with honey or eggs, and the length is increased when they feel 

 disposed, or 'get around to it,' perhaps; as a thick rim is left 

 around the upper edge of the cell, they have the material at 

 hand, to lengthen it at any time. This thick rim is also very 

 necessary to give the bees a secure foothold, for the sides of the 

 cells are so thin, they would be very apt to break down with 

 even the light weight of a bee. When honey is coming in rap- 

 idly, and the bees are crowded for room to store it, their 

 eagerness is so plainly apparent, as they push the work along, 

 that they fairly seem to quiver with excitement; but, for all 

 that, they skip about from one cell to another in the same 

 way, no one bee working in the same spot to exceed a minute 

 or two, at the very outside. Very frequently, after one has bent 

 a piece of wax a certain way, the next tips it in the opposite 

 direction, and so on until completion; but after all have given 

 it a twist or a pull, it is found in pretty nearly the right spot. 

 As near as I can discover, they moisten the thin ribbons of 

 wax, with some sort of fluid or saliva (41). As the bee always 

 preserves the thick rib* or rim of the comb he is working, the 

 looker-on would suppose he was making the walls of a consid- 

 erable thickness, but if we drive him away, and break this 

 rim, we will find that his mandibles have come so nearly to- 



* The constant preserving cf this rib or heavy edge of the comb 

 while tlie ■work progresses, explains why old comb lengthened and 

 scaled with new wax, sometimes retains a part of its dark color 

 throughout. Some of the old wax is undoubtedly mixed with the new, 

 in the crnstant remodeling of this heavier edge, till the comb is sealed. 



