BEES IN THE HIVE, 199 
made yet to put it in ; neither can they build combs 
with the rest, for they have no wax in their wax- 
pockets. So they just go and hang quietly on to the 
other bees, and v there they remain for twenty-four 
hours, during which time they digest the honey they 
have gathered, and part of it forms wax and oozes 
out from the scales under their body. Then they 
are prepared to join the others at work and plaster 
wax on to the hive. 
And now, as soon as a rough lump of wax is ready, 
another set of bees come to do their work. These are 
called the nursing bees, because they prepare the cells 
and feed the young ones. One of these bees, standing on 
the roof of the hive, begins to force her head into the 
wax, biting with her jaws and moving her head to and 
fro. Soon she has made the beginning of a round 
hollow, and then she passes on to make another, while 
a second bee takes her place and enlarges the first 
one. As many as twenty bees will be employed in 
this way, one after another, upon each hole before it is 
large enough for the base of a cell. 
Meanwhile another set of nursing bees have been 
working just in the same way on the other side of the 
wax, and so a series of hollows are made back to back 
all over the comb. Then the bees form the walls of 
the cells, and soon a number of six-sided tubes, about 
half an inch deep, stand all along each side of the 
comb ready to receive honey or bee-eggs. 
You can see the shape of these cells in c, d, Fig. 56, and 
notice how closely they fit into each other. Even the 
ends are so shaped that, as they lie back to back, the 
bottom of one cell (B, Fig. 56) fits into the space between 
