92 THE BUILDIKG OF BEES. 



206. " If we examine the bees closely during the season of 

 comb-building and honey-gathering, we shall find many of them 

 with the wax scales protruding between the rings that form the 

 body, and these scales are either piclced from their bodies, or 

 from the bottom of the hive or honey boxes in which they are 

 building. If a bee is obliged to carry one of these wax scales 

 but a short distance, he takes it in his mandibles, and looks as 

 business-like with it thus, as a carpenter with a board on his 

 shoulder. If he has to carry it from the bottom of the honey box, 

 he takes it in a way that I cannot explain any better than to say 

 he slips it under his chin, in the mandibles or jaws. When thus 

 equipped, you would never know he was encumbered with any- 

 thing, unless it chanced to slip out, when he will very dextrously 

 tuck it back with one of his forefeet. The little plate of wax 



Fig. 37. Kg. 38. 



is so warm, from being kept under his chin, as to be quite soft 

 when it gets back ; and as he takes it out, and gives it a pinch 

 against the comb where the building is going on, one would- 

 think he might stop a while and put it into place ; but not he ; 

 for off he scampers and twists around so many different ways, 

 you might think he was not one of the working kind at all. An- 

 other follows after him sooner or later, and gives the wax a pinch, 

 or a little scraping or burnishing with his polished mandibles, 

 then another, and so on, and the sum total of all these manoeu- 

 vres is that the comb seems almost to grow out of nothing ; yet 

 no bee ever makes a cell himself, and no comb building is ever 

 done by any bee while standing in a cell ; neither do the bees ever 

 stand in rows and ' excavate,' or any thing of the kind." 



