154 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
day the number of those so furnished is small in compa- 
rison of those that are not. In a hive, however, in which 
a swarm is recently established, it is generally brought in 
at all parts of the day. He supposes, in order for its 
being formed into pellets, that it requires some moisture, 
which the heat evaporates after the above hour; but in 
the case of recently colonized hives, that the bees go a 
great way to seek it in moist and shady places?. 
When a bee has completed her lading, she returns to 
the hive to dispose of it. The honey is disgorged into 
the honey-pots or cells destined to receive it, and is dis- 
charged from the honey-bag by its alternate contraction 
and dilatation. A cell will contain the contents of many 
honey-bags. When a bee comes to disgorge the honey, 
with its fore legs it breaks the thick cream that is always 
on the top, and the honey which it yields passes under it. 
This cream is honey of a thicker consistence than the 
rest, which rises to the top in the cells like cream on milk: 
it is not level, but forms an oblique surface over the honey. 
The cells, as you know, are usually horizontal, yet the 
honey does net run out. The cream, aided probably by 
the general thickness of the honey and the attraction of 
the sides of the cell, prevents this. Bees, when they bring 
home the honey, do not always disgorge it; they some- 
times give it to such of their companions as have been at 
work within the hive’. Some of the cells are filled with 
honey for daily use, and some with what is intended fora 
a Reaum, v. 802.—comp. 433. I have seen bees cut before it was 
light. 
» Huber observes that the honey fer store is collected by the wax- 
making bees only (adeilles ciricres), and that the nurses (abeilies nour- 
rices) gather no more than what is wanted for themselves and com- 
panions at work in the hive. ii. 66. 
