188 
WAX AND COMB CONSTRUCTION. 
When working bell glasses we have frequently had 
combs 2 to 3 inches thick. Sometimes the cells are 
square, or five-sided, and the alignment is rarely exact. 
The thickness of the walls also varies greatly, one 
being sometimes double the thickness of the next one 
to it. When honey cells are built on a curved divid- 
ing wall, the bees seem to make no attempt to correct 
the diverging or converging lines. In brood combs 
they do make an attempt to do so, and therefore fill 
up little cavities, such as we have shown (the dark 
places) in Fig. 72, with wax. But in honey cells 
sometimes the mouths of the cells are expanded to 
nearly double their diameter, and not infrequently two 
separate cells are merged into one when they reach 
half their length. 
From the above it will be seen that although the 
bees may endeavour to arrive at a perfectly symme- 
trical cell, they hardly ever obtain one. 
We have seen that bees commence on a base by 
scooping out the wax. This they do with their jaws 
(Fig. 63, b), which are hollowed out for the purpose. 
As the wax is scooped out it is put on the side walls, 
which are thereby thickened, and give the mouth of 
the cell a circular form, in all stages of its progress. 
Many cells are found into which a bee cannot enter, 
but as the wax is always added to the top edge she 
has only to work down inside a very little way, and 
we presume she does much in the same way that a 
bricklayer would do when building a chimney from 
the outside, into which he could not introduce his 
whole body. 
