APIS. 
327 
themselves together, and cling to each other in the same 
manner by their hind claws only. These festoons are 
speedily suspended, and with a fresh swarm are in im¬ 
mediate active operation. The secretion requires about 
twenty-four hours to complete, and as this is accom¬ 
plished the festoons break up, and these secreters convey 
it to where the sculpturer bees or builders are moulding 
the cells, to whom it is successively supplied by the 
secreters themselves as wanted, for none is stored, al¬ 
though the wax of old or dilapidated parts of the hive, or 
of the vacated cells of the new-born queens are recon¬ 
verted to use. These builders are very rapid in their 
construction of the hexagonal cells, which, as they are 
progressively completed, are stored with honey, this 
being during the time assiduously gathered by the honey 
collectors, and these cells are interspersed occasionally 
with those wherein pollen or propolis is stored, each of 
which, as the bees collecting them successively return, 
is cast into the selected cell by the bee collecting it, who 
returns at once to the same employment, whilst the 
store thus deposited is immediately compactly pressed in 
and warehoused by other bees who fulfil that duty, or 
who cover it in when the cells are filled, with a waxen 
covercle formed of concentric circles; or, in the case of 
the honey-cells, to keep the thickened operculum de¬ 
posited upon it in due position and repair, after the re¬ 
tiring of the bee which brought home the fresh store of 
honey, and which had displaced it to regurgitate her 
addition into the cell. This operculum or cover is of a 
thicker consistency than the honey itself, and prevents 
its oozing from the cells, which would often take place 
from their uniformly horizontal position, were it not for 
the sagacity which prompts them to introduce this pre- 
