BEES IN THE HIVE. 209 
a flower, or biting those bags of yellow dust or pollen 
which we mentioned in Lecture VII. When she has 
covered herself with pollen, she wall brush it off with 
her feet, and, bringing it to her mouth, she will moist- 
en and roll it into a little ball, and then pass it back 
from the first pair of legs to the second and so to the 
third or hinder pair. Here she will pack it into a 
little hairy groove called a " basket " in the joint of 
one of the hind legs, where you may see it, looking 
like a swelled joint, as she hovers among the flowers. 
She often fills both hind legs in this way, and when 
she arrives back at the hive the nursing bees take the 
lumps from her, and eat it themselves, or mix it with 
honey to feed the young bees ; or, when they have 
any to spare, store it away in old honey-cells to be 
used by-and-by. This is the dark, bitter stuff called 
" bee-bread " which you often find in a honeycomb, 
especially in a comb which has been filled late in the 
summer. 
When the bee has been relieved of the bee-bread 
she goes off to one of the clean cells in the new comb, 
and, standing on the edge, throws up the honey from 
the honey-bag into the cell. One cell will hold the 
contents of many honey-bags, and so the busy little 
workers have to work all day filling cell after cell, in 
which the honey lies uncovered, being too thick and 
sticky to flow out, and is used for daily food unless 
there is any to spare, and then they close up the cells 
with wax to keep for the winter. 
Meanwhile, a day or two after the bees have settled 
in the hive, the queen-bee begins to get very restless, 
15 
