78 HUMBLE CREATURES. 



ceros, whicli they use in rebuilding cells that have 

 been destroyed, in order to strengthen arid support 

 the edifice." 



Bees have been known to make a most remarkable 

 use of propolis; namely, to render innocuous the 

 bodies of intruders into the hive, who have fallen 

 victims to their stings. There is one case mentioned 

 of a mouse which they had slaughtered in the hive, 

 and completely cased in this substance ; but the most 

 wonderful application of the material, and at the same 

 time the strangest evidence of the instinct of the 

 creature, is found in the anecdote, that they once 

 soldered down the shell of an unfortunate snail that 

 had crept up the side of their hive ; " thus fixing 

 him (as an essayist in the 'Quarterly Review^ has 

 wittily remarked) as a standing joke, a laughing- 

 stock, a hving mummy, like Marmion's Constance, 

 ' alive within, the tomb' [for a snail, though ex- 

 cluded from the air, would not die] ; so that he who 

 had heretofore carried his own house was now made 

 his own monument*." 



Having thus briefly referred to the properties of 

 the materials collected by the workers for the con- 

 struction and maintenance of the hive, as well as for 

 the nourishment of its inmates, let us now consider 

 the nature and operations of the little labourers 

 themselves. 



The Worker-bees are, as before stated, females in 



* ' The Honey Bee/ Murray, 1852, a most entertaining little 

 pamphlet. 



