






HYMENOPTERA. 
The weight of a royal cell is equivalent to that of a hundred 
other cells. The bees spare nothing to make it comfortable and 
spacious. “It is quite a Louvre,” says Réaumur. 
But independently of their use as cradles, these cells serve as 
store-houses for honey. 
A few of these are used in turn for both these purposes, but 
/a great number are reserved exclusively for stores of honey and 
SS 
pollen. This is brought, as we have already said, in the form of 
pellets, in the baskets which the hind-legs form. The working 

Fig. 319.—Interior of a hive. 
bee, when it has gathered it, pushes it into the cell, pressing it in 
with its hind-legs. Another then arrives, and kneads up the mass 
'to make it adhesive. The bee brings the honey in its first 
stomach, and disgorges it into one of the cells where it is to be 
kept. However, it is not always by carrying its honey into a cell 
| that the worker is relieved of it, often finding an opportunity to 
deliver it on the way. 
“When it meets,” says Réaumur,* “any of its companions 
: 
who want food, and who have not had time to go and get any, it 
* +*Mémoires pour servir a |’ Histoire des Insectes,” vol. v., p 449. 











