92 
THE HONEY-MAKERS. 
and the solitude was complete, we thought our- 
selves beyond the reach of animal life ; but while 
we were sitting on the rock, a solitary humble bee 
came winging his flight from the eastern valley, 
and alighted on the knee of one of the men. It 
was a strange place — the dry-rock, and the 
highest peak of the Rocky Mountains — for a 
lover of warm sunshine and flowers; and as 
pleased as ourselves with the idea that he was the 
first of his species to cross the mountain barrier, 
a solitary pioneer to foretell the advance of civil- 
ization.” 
If the reader should open the nest of a humble 
bee, he would find several combs placed one above 
another, and supported by small pillars of wax. 
These combs are not formed of honey-cells, as was 
the case with the hive bee, but of the cocoons spun 
by the young before they change into perfect bees. 
When the young brood are in the larva, or 
caterpillar state, they live soeially or together, un- 
til they are about to change into nymphs, when 
each spins a silken cocoon, in which it remains, 
head downwards, for four or five days, and then 
comes out into a new existence. 
