! 9 8 
THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE 
from among its companions and settle on the top of 
the inside of the hive, turning herself round and round, 
so as to push the other bees back, and to make a space 
in which she can work. Then she will begin to pick 
at the under part of her body with her fore-legs, and 
will bring a scale of wax from a curious sort of pocket 
under her abdomen. Holding this wax in her claws, 
she will bite it with her hard, pointed upper jaws, 
which move to and fro sideways like a pair of pincers, 
then, moistening it with her tongue into a kind ot 
paste, she will draw it out like a ribbon and plaster it 
on the top of the hive. 
After that she will take another piece ; for she has 
eight of these little wax-pockets, and she will go on 
F'g- 55- 
till they are all exhausted. 
Then she will fly away out 
of the hive, leaving a small 
wax lump on the hive ceil- 
ing or on the bar stretched 
across it ; then her place 
will be taken by another 
bee who will go through 
the same manoeuvres. 
This bee will be followed 
by another, and another, 
till a large wall of wax 
has been built, hanging 
from the bar of the hive as in Fig. 55, only that it 
will not yet have cells fashioned in it. 
Meanwhile the bees which have been gathering 
honey out of doors begin to come back laden. But 
they i^nnot store their honey, for there nrc no cells 
Plate of wax with bases of cells, 
hanging from the bar of a hive. 
