HYMENOPTERA 361 



3. Work in the Bee Community. — -Scarcely has the new home been 

 occupied, when work is commenced. The working females fetch resin 

 from coniferous and other trees. With this so-called propolis they close 

 up all the chinks and small holes of their dwelling in order to keep off 

 wet and cold. From the wax, which protrudes in the form of small 

 plates or scales from the under surface of the abdomen between the 

 middle somites, they build up their well-known structures, the honey- 

 combs. These hang vertically from the roof of the hive,, and consist of 

 two rows of cells placed horizontally back to back. All the cells are of 

 exactly the same size (wide enough for the queen to enter, and of the 

 same length as a worker bee; why?), hexagonal, and with the floor 

 forming a basin-shaped depression. Behind the first comb, a second, 

 third, etc., is constructed, until the interior of the hive is by degrees 

 completely occupied. 



After the completion of the first combs the queen, too, commences to 

 be active. She steps from cell to cell, depositing an egg in each. This 

 business of the depositing of eggs has to be carried on with much 

 industry, since the working females during the working season 

 (summer) only attain to an age of about six weeks. (During her 

 whole lifetime the queen lays about a million eggs.) Only a few days 

 after its deposition, an eyeless (since it lives in the dark) larva escapes 

 from the egg. (Compare with the larva of the cockchafer, the house-fly, 

 and other insects.) Being legless, i.e., a maggot, it cannot leave its 

 birthplace to obtain its own food, and would starve if the workers did 

 not bring it food. And these faithful nurses provide their helpless 

 sister with food so abundantly that in a few days it has grown to such 

 a size as almost to completely fill the cell. The workers then close 

 this cell with a waxen lid ; the larva surrounds itself with a thin silky 

 web (see silkworm) and becomes a pupa, in which the limbs are free 

 from the body (see cockchafer). 



When the metamor-phosis to the perfect insect is complete, the young 

 bee pushes the lid away from its prison and mingles with the swarm of 

 workers. During the first weeks of its life it only performs "domestic 

 tasks," such as looking after the young brood and keeping the home 

 clean ; afterwards, however, it flies out with the others to the flowers to 

 fetch and carry home food for itself, the brood, the workers who are 

 busy in the hive, the queen, and the drones (if any are present). In the 

 spring the bees construct beside the worker cells also larger cells, in 

 which drones are produced from eggs of a special kind (drone cells), and 

 a few very large cask-shaped cells, in which the young queens grow up 

 under the most careful nurture (royal cells). The queens are produced 

 from exactly the same eggs as the worker females, but, as we have just 



