mouth parts, called mandibles, projecting from the head, and 
between them is a slender tongue projecting much beyond 
the mandibles, covered at the end with delicate hairs. With 
this, liquid honey in flowers is licked, lapped or sucked up 
and thus taken into the first stomach, or honey stomach. 
When this stomach is filled, the bee hastily returns to the 
hive and expels from its mouth the gathered honey. The 
mandibles, being stiff and sharp, are used to cut open flower 
tubes or buds to reach the honey or to gather solids, like 
the propolis, needed for the walls of the hive. 
The legs are adapted also to the work of the bee. The 
two hind legs are furnished with very broad joints with mar¬ 
gins of stiff hairs and a few small hairs over the surface, 
forming a basket in which is carried the pollen. When a 
bee enters a flower for honey, it covers itself with yellow 
pollen. When it emerges it brushes off the pollen with its 
hind legs and gathers it in the baskets. You may have seen 
bees on their way to the hive with yellow masses on their 
legs. 
Having now characterized the three different kinds of 
bees in a colony, let us observe them at work in the hive. 
We will consider that the hive is new and the Queen, with 
her followers, has just taken possession of it. 
Materials of construction are needed. Promptly a goodly 
number of bees fly off to gather propolis , a gummy excretion 
found on the buds of many plants and trees, especially the 
poplar. This is carried home in the mandibles and turned 
over to other workers, who use it to close up all cracks and 
holes, except the one for exit and entrance. The whole 
interior wall is covered with this propolis. By the way, this 
propolis is also used for embalming dead bodies within the 
hive. If an animal, for example, a slug, should enter a hive 
unobserved, it is stung to death as soon as it is discovered; 
and, as it is too large to be dragged out, it is at once com¬ 
pletely covered with propolis, which preserves the body, and 
the hive is not polluted. Or, if the animal is a snail, a 
similar animal having a shell, only the opening is covered 
and the snail enclosed. 
The next operation is to build the comb, of which the 
material is wax — beeswax. It was once thought that wax 
was made by the bee from pollen, taken into the stomach 
4 
