6o The Honey-Makers 



wings separates them from the lower, when the latter slip 

 away out of sight under the former. 



Important as it is that the bee should have ample wing 

 expanse when flying, it is equally important that it be not 

 hampered by outreaching wings when about its work in 

 flowers and in the hive, where large wings would not only 

 be inconvenient, but would be liable to become torn and 

 broken. 



The speed with which the wings move is amazing, it 

 having been calculated that during their swiftest motion 

 they make over four hundred vibrations a second ! 



Powerful muscles are necessary to sustain the bee's 

 flight, and its thorax is a mass of muscles, perhaps the 

 most remarkable of any in the world. 



Tiny threads they are, yet when one considers the work 

 they do, the massive muscles that move the elephant or the 

 ox are as nothing compared to them. 



The rapidity with which the bee is borne through the air 

 is not very wefl known, as it is not an easy point to deter- 

 mine. Cheshire says, — 



" My own observations lead me to suppose that the pace 

 ranges between two and sixteen or eighteen miles per hour, 

 depending upon the load and the nature of the errand — 

 a bee, bearing the body of the deceased sister from the hive, 

 taking the funereal pace, while those issuing forth on busi- 

 ness bent go express." 



If the bee moved its small wings with the dehberation 

 of the butterfly, they could not hold it suspended for a 

 moment. But it has an engine that the butterfly dreams 

 not of. At the moment of flight its thoracic muscles start 

 the wings to moving with a rapidity that makes one think 

 of a pair of buzz saws, and away goes the bee, merrily 

 speeding through the air, its clieery hum an involuntary 

 song of triumph to its own wonderful structure. 



