HONEYCOMB 
491 
ties. Worker bees reared in drone-cells 
are sometimes extra large in size; but as 
to whether they can be made permanently 
larger by such a course is very doubtful. 
The difficulty, at present, seems to be the 
tendency to rear a great quantity of use¬ 
less drones. By having a hive furnished 
entirely with worker comb, it is possible 
to restrict the rearing of drones down to a 
comparatively small number. A few cells 
near the bottom or corners of a frame are 
sometimes reconstructed into drone comb. 
See large illustration under Brooi> and 
Brood-rkaring ; also Comb Foundation. 
ITOW BEES BUILD COMB. 
In this day and age of bees and honey it 
would seem that one should be able to de¬ 
scribe how bees build comb, with almost as 
much ease as one would tell how cows and 
horses eat grass; but for all that, records 
are lacking of careful and close experi¬ 
ments, such as Darwin made many years 
ago. In the author’s house-apiarv there 
were dozens of hives where the bees were 
building right up close to the glass; and 
all one had to do, in order to see how it was 
done, was to take a chair and sit down be¬ 
fore them. But the little fellows have such 
a queer sleight-of-hand way of doing the 
work that one hardly knows how they do 
accomplish it. 
If one will examine his bees closely dur¬ 
ing the season of comb-building and honev- 
gathering, he will find a good many of 
them with wax scales protruding between 
the rings that form the body, and these 
scales are removed from their bodies as 
described at the beginning of this article. 
If a bee is obliged to carry one of these 
wax scales but a short distance, it takes it 
in its mandibles, and looks as business-like 
with it thus as a carpenter with a board on 
his shoulder. If it has to carry it from the 
bottom of the honey-box, it takes it in a 
way that it is difficult to explain any better 
than to say it slips it under its chin. When 
thus equipped, one would never know it 
was encumbered with anything, unless it 
chanced to slip out, when it will very dex- 
trously tuck it back with one of its fore 
feet. The little plate of wax is so warm 
from being kept under its chin as to be 
quite soft when it gets back; and as it 
takes it out, and gives it a pinch against 
the comb where the building is going on, 
one would think it might stop a while, and 
put it into place; but not that bee; for oft' 
it scampers and twists around so many dif¬ 
ferent ways one. might think it was not one 
ot the working kind at all. Another fol¬ 
lows after it sooner or later, and gives the 
wax a pinch, or a little scraping and bur¬ 
nishing with its polished mandibles, then 
another, and so on; and' the sum total of 
all these maneuvers is, that the comb seems 
almost to grow out of nothing; yet no one 
bee ever makes a cell. 
The finished comb is the result of the 
united efforts of the moving, restless mass; 
and the great mystery is, that anything so 
wonderful can ever result at all from such 
a mixed-up, skipping-about way of work¬ 
ing as they seem to have. When the cells 
are built out only part way they are filled 
with honey or eggs, and the length is in¬ 
creased when they feel disposed, or “get 
around to it,” perhaps. It may be that 
they find it easier \vorking with shallow 
walls about the cells, for they can take care 
of the brood much easier, and put in the 
honey easier, too, in all probability; and. 
as a thick rim or coping is always left 
around the upper edge of the celi (see page 
489), no matter what its depth, they have 
the material at hand to lengthen it. This 
thick rim is also very necessary to give the 
bees a secure foothold, for the sides of the 
cells are so thin they would be very apt to 
break down with even the light weight of a 
bee. When honey is coming in rapidly, and 
the bees are crowded for room to store it, 
their eagerness is so plainly apparent, as 
they push the work along, that they fairly 
seem to quiver with excitement; but for all 
that they skip about from one cell to an¬ 
other in the same way, no one bee working 
in the same spot to exceed a minute or two 
at the very outside. Quite frequently, after 
one has bent a piece of wax a certain way, 
the next tips it in the opposite direction, 
and so on until completion; but after all 
have given it a twist and a pull, it is found 
in pretty nearly the right spot. As nearly 
as the author can discover, they moisten the 
thin ribbons of wax with some sort of fluid 
or saliva. As the bee always preserves the 
thick rib or rim of the comb at the top of 
the cell it is working, the looker-on would 
suppose it was making the walls of consid- 
