WAX, AND BEE ARCHITECTURE. 173 



without noticing its salient peculiarities. It is circular — 

 the typical form — in cross section, because it is built 

 alone, and is made to grow with the growth of the 

 grub it contains ; and even if it have a companion 

 (for reasons given under Queen Raising), such cannot 

 be started so near that interference is possible ; and 

 as it is deprived of surrounding support, and exposed 

 to unusual strain — having to bear a cluster of bees 

 crowding round to give "royal jelly/' and maintain 

 temperature — great strength is a necessity, and so 

 the economic labourers, that pare down worker cells 

 to the utmost limit, heap on material till it attains 

 forty or fifty times the thickness they ordinarily 

 allow. Yet their scooping instinct does not desert 

 them, as they pit the queen cell over every part of 

 its surface — an operation which saves material without 

 decreasing rigidity. But what is it that so perfectly 

 counterfeits mechanical wisdom, and prevents them 

 continuing this pitting to the limit reached in building 

 worker cells, which would inevitably wreck the nursing 

 cradle of their future queen, and so, perhaps, abso- 

 lutely deprive them of all hope of a successor to a 

 lost mother ? 



Liquid dyes kept within worker or drone cells for 

 weeks, have not, in any case, stained water lying in 

 the surrounding ones, which I have never found 

 other than perfect, notwithstanding the extreme thin- 

 ness of the walls. The bees labour at both sides of the 

 latter, not only scraping the shreds, but rubbing them 

 into complete union with their maxillae, and this will 

 account for their freedom from faults ; but observation 

 has led me to form a different opinion of the sealing 



