SUMMER LIFE IN A BEE-HIVE 167 
find it driving onward unremittingly. The crowd is 
surging to and fro. There is ever the busy deep 
labour-note. Its people are building, brewing, 
wax-making, scavenging, wet-nursing, being born 
and dying: it is all going on without pause or break 
inside those four reverberating walls, while you 
stand without in the dew-soaked grass and level 
sunbeams wondering how it is that all the world 
can be at full flood-tide of merry life and music 
while these mysterious hive people give scarce a 
sign. 
It is at night chiefly that the combs are built. 
The wax, that is a secretion from the bees’ own 
bodies, will generate only under great heat, and 
the temperature of the hive is naturally greatest 
when all the family is at home. In the night also 
such works as transferring a large mass of honey 
from one comb to another are undertaken. It is 
curious to note that at night time the drones get 
together in the remotest parts of the hive, apparently 
to keep up the heat in these distant quarters, which 
are away from the main cluster of worker-bees. 
There is. hardly another thing in creation, perhaps, 
with a worse name than the drone-bee. But like 
all bad things he is not so bad as he is represented. 
Apart from his main and obvious use, the drone 
fulfils at least one very important office. His habit 
is not to leave his snug corner until close upon 
midday. Thus, when every able-bodied worker 
bee is out foraging, the temperature of the 
hive is sustained by the presence of the drones, 
and the young bee-brood is in no danger of 
chilling. 
Though the supreme direction of all affairs in a 
