326 
BRITISH BEES. 
pouch wherein it is collected, thence to the second 
stomach, and then on to the cysts or little bags which 
run along on each side from the second to the fifth 
ventral segments, and correspond and communicate with 
eight trapezoidal depressions placed externally upon the 
plates of the ventral segments—four on each side, 
through the concavity of which the secreted wax exudes 
in a liquid, transparent, hot state, forming a thin scale 
within each, which the air hardens into a white sub¬ 
stance, as the pulp of paper is hardened upon the form 
into which it is introduced, or like salt crystallizing into 
flakes from sea-water in shallow salines. This, how¬ 
ever, is not yet wax, although its essential constituent, 
but to become so these scales are removed by the sco- 
pulie of the posterior plantae and their auricle, to the 
intermediate feet and by these transferred to the ante- 
rior pair, which pass them to the mandibles, where they 
are masticated and mixed with a saliva issuing from the 
mouth, and thus intermingled they consolidate into a 
white opaque mass, which issues from the mouth like a 
thin strip of riband, and constitutes true wax, plastic to 
their manipulation. To' form this secretion, the bees 
having collected the honey themselves in the first in¬ 
stance, or having consumed sufficient before leaving the 
hive with the swarm, but which they subsequently ob¬ 
tain from the supplies stored in the present hive, hang 
themselves in festoons in all directions about its cavitv, 
«/ * 
each festoon being formed by two parallel chains of bees 
clinging together; the top bee on each side hangs by its 
anterior claws to the top of the hive, and the next in 
succession grasps with its fore claws the hind claws of 
that and so on, until the depth of the festoon they find 
to be sufficient, when the bottom bees of each chain swinsr 
