490 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



construct fresh cells, the bees lengthen the honey cells 

 by adding a rim to them. 



You will be anxious to learn the process which these 

 ingenious artificers follow in constructing their habita- 

 tions : and on this head I am happy that the recent pub- 

 lication of a new edition of the celebrated Huber's New 

 Observations on Bees, in which this subject is for the first 

 time elucidated, will enable me to gratify your curiosity. 



But in the first place you must be told of an important 

 and unlooked-for discovery of this unrivalled detector of 

 the hidden mysteries of nature — that the workers or neu- 

 ters, as they are called, of a hive, consist of two descrip- 

 tions of individuals, one of which he calls abeilles now- 

 rices or jpetites abeilles, the other abeilles cirieres. — The 

 former, or nurse-bees, are smaller than the latter; their 

 stomach is not capable of such distention ; and their 

 office is to build the combs and cells after the foundation 

 has been laid by the cirieres ; to collect honey ; and to 

 feed the larvae. The abeilles cirieres are the makers of 

 wax, which substance Huber has now indisputably as- 

 certained to be secreted, as John Hunter long ago sus- 

 pected, beneath the ventral segments, from between which 

 it is taken by the bees when wanted, in the form of thin 

 scales. The apparatus in which the wax is secreted 

 consists of four pair of membranous bags or wax-pockets 

 situated at the base of each intermediate segment, one on 

 each side, which can only be seen by pressing the abdo- 

 men so as to lengthen it, being usually concealed by the 

 over-lapping of the preceding segments. It should be 

 observed that this discovery was nearly made bv our 

 countryman Thorley, who in his Female Monarchy (17 '44) 



