BEES IN THE HIVE. 
honey, while others guard the entrance of the hive to 
keep away the destructive wax-moth, which tries to 
lay its eggs in the comb so that its young ones may 
feed on the honey. All industrious people have to 
guard their property against thieves and vagabonds, 
and the bees have many intruders, such as wasps and 
snails and slugs, which creep in whenever they get 
a chance. If they succeed in escaping the sentinel 
bees, then a fight takes place within the hive, and the 
invader is stung to death. 
Sometimes, however, after they have killed the 
enemy, the bees cannot get rid of his body, for a snail 
or slug is too heavy to be easily moved, and yet it 
would make the hive very unhealthy to allow it to 
remain. In this dilemma the' ingenious little bees 
fetch the gummy " propolis " from the plant-buds and 
cement the intruder all over, thus embalming his body 
and preventing it from decaying. 
And so the life of this wonderful city goes on. 
Building, harvesting, storing, nursing, ventilating and 
cleaning from morn till night, the little worker-bee 
lives for about eight months, and. in that time has 
done quite her share of work in the world. Only the 
young bees, born late in the season, live on till the 
next year to work in the spring. The queen-bee lives 
longer, probably about two years, and then she too 
dies, after having had a family of many thousands of 
children. 
We have already pointed out that in our fairy-land 
of nature all things work together so as to bring order 
out of apparent confusion. But though we should 
naturally expect winds and currents, rivers and clouds, 
