44 THE HONEYFLOW 



indolent, and, for the brief space of their existence, 

 carry things with a high hand. 



While this ceaseless stream of labourers is 



coming and going, the inside of the hive presents 



no less animated a scene. On a centre comb the 



queen mother is moving from one cell to another 



with studied order, surrounded by a crowd of 



attendants, who ply her steadily with nourishment. 



First poking her head into a cell, to see, so it is 



said, that it is quite clean, but most probably to 



make sure there is not already an egg there, she 



next inserts her abdomen and deposits at the 



bottom the little pearly white egg. Without 



pause she goes on to the next, in gradually 



widening circles. In the course of twenty-four 



hours she lays somewhere between two and three 



thousand eggs. On the next comb, which she 



was working upon three days ago, the tiny grubs 



are hatching, and are being attended by the nurse 



bees. These nurses are the younger bees, little 



fledglings which have only emerged from the 



cells a day or so. They are feeding the young 



larvae with a mixture of honey and pollen, 



half digested by themselves, and mixed, it is 



believed, with a kind of milk, which, normally, 



is only secreted by the very young bees. 



Further back are cells containing larvse nearly 

 fullgrown, which are being fed with coarser food 

 more suited to their stature. Beyond these are 

 cells covered in with a dull yellowish layer of wax 



