COMB. 91 
Scales of wax, in lumps, can then be found where they have 
clustered. 
203. Although the faculty of producing wax is dimin- 
ished in old bees, who are subject to the natural law which 
makes it more difficult to fatten an old animal, it is proved 
that they may also produce small scales of wax. 
“During the active storing of the past season, especially when 
comb building was in rapid progress, I found that nearly every 
bee taken from the flowers contained wax scales of varying sizes 
in the wax-pockets.”—(A. J. Cook.) 
204. The first condition indispensable for bees to pro- 
duce wax, is to have the stomach well filled. 
It is an interesting fact that honey-gathering and comb- 
building go on simultaneously ; so that when one stops, the 
other ceases also. As soon as the honey harvest begins to 
fail, so that consumption is in advance of production, the 
bees cease to build new comb, even though large portions 
of their hive are unfilled. When honey no longer abounds 
in the fields, it is wisely ordered that they should not con- 
sume, in comb-building, the treasures which may be needed 
for Winter use. What safer rule could have been given 
them? ‘ 
It takes about twenty-four hours, for a bee’s food to be- 
come transformed into wax. 
205. ‘Having filled themselves with honey, they gather in 
chains; not in a single group, but in a number of groups, hang- 
ing in a parallel curtain, in the direction of the comb to be con- 
structed. Thus a bee clings to the ceiling with her claws, or the 
sticky rubber of her feet, her posterior limbs hanging down; 
another bee grapples the claws of these posterior feet, with the 
claws of her anterior limbs, letting her hind limbs hang also, to 
be grappled by a third, and so on, till the first chain meets an- 
other, and both united form an arch,top downward. (fig. 37.) 
This single chain becomes compound when several are in the 
same line (fig. 38), and grouped near one another.””—(Sartori and. 
Rauschenfels, “L’Apicoltura in Italia,’ Milan, 1878.) 
