pollen-cells the pollen collected by their elders; they help the emerging bees into the outer darkness of the hive; they cleanse the vacated cells, and, standing in parallel rows, obliquely one behind another, they regulate by the fanning of their wings the ventilation of the hive and drive off the superfluous water in the nectar' until it obtains the consistency of honey. All this is done, and done well, without guidance and without practice.

Only after a week or eight days do our young workers venture into the light, and this great adventure is fearfully and timidly undertaken. Crossing the threshold, they attempt at first short flights, enlarging them each time, but never do they turn their head in any direction save that of their hive and home. During their first flight their tracheae-their breathing-tubes—are for the first time filled, and they now attain their normal figure. Soon, however, they return to resume their household duties, for, like Martha, they are 'cumbered about much serving.' Day by day, if the weather be favourable, these trial flights are resumed about noon, until the young workers are well orientated as to the position of their hive amongst surrounding objects; as a rule many of the younger bees and drones fly together, producing a veritable cloud of flying insects. After another eight or ten days the workers are strong enough to go in search of honey, pollen, water, or the sticky propolis.

Both colour and scent in the flowers attract the bees; their favourite hue is blue and certain purplish reds; then come in descending order, violet, red, white, and lastly yellow. When collecting the pollen, the bee hovers close to the flower and besprinkles the anthers with a little honey and saliva, then approaching the blossom she kneads the now moistened and sticky mass of pollen with her jaws, and finally packs it away in the baskets or corbicula on the outer surface of the tibia of the last pair of legs. But much pollen is collected in a more indirect way. As the bee moves about in and on the flower, pollen-grains fall all over her body and readily adhere to the branched hairs which are thickly scattered over its surface. The first joint of each foot (tarsus) is provided with a thick coating of moistened bristles, and these are used to brush together and collect the pollen scattered over the body of the bee.

Unless the honey harvest be unusually bountiful the young bee which has just started collecting food will confine herself to pollen, but after some days she will turn her attention to honey, or rather to nectar, which is not at all the same thing as honey. The proboscis is sunk into the nectaries of the flower and the sweet juice is sucked up. The nectar is stored in the so-called honey-crop for transference to the hive, and when a bee is seen seeking her home with her abdomen distended by a full honey-crop it is useless to search her for pollen; reciprocally a bee whose hinder legs are burdened with pollen has ever a slender abdomen. Except at the time of swarming,

A bee upon the wing, showing the position of the middle legs when they touch and pat down pollen masses. (Casteel.)

when the bees that leave the hive gorge themselves with honey so as to have some provision for their new home, no worker ever leaves the hive laden with honey. A bee with a swollen abdomen is always a homing bee.

The area from which bees collect nectar and pollen usually extends over a circle whose radius is three to four kilometres, although, under special circumstances, i.e. an unusually rich supply of nectar, bees may fly six or even seven kilometres, but first they carefully orientate themselves so as to fix the position of the hive in their brain. The return journey causes 10 trouble and is quick, a heavily-laden bee flying home at he rate of 12 to 20 kilometres an hour. A bee without ney and without pollen is said by some observers to fly

at the rate of 32 kilometres an hour, whilst others claim that a speed of 65 kilometres an hour can be attained.

Nectar is a sweet watery fluid which in almost every case has a specific flavour associated with the flower from which it is drawn. This specific flavour as a rule disappears in the honey, which is a much less watery fluid than the nectar. The several changes which nectar undergoes in becoming honey begin in the honey-crop, where the saliva which is mixed with the nectar starts the transformation of the canesugar of the nectar into the dextrose (grape-sugar) and laevulose (fruit-sugar) of the honey, and this process continues after the fluid has been deposited in the waxen cells. When honey is plentiful the cells stored with pollen will receive, before they are covered in, a little honey as well as a little saliva, together with a minute drop of formic acid which acts as a preservative. The need of honey in the hive surpasses that of pollen, and the honey-cells are more numerous than 'bee-bread' cells. The stored honey and pollen serve for the daily food of the workers, the drones and the queen, but in a healthy hive there is a surplus store, and this surplus store enables the community of honey-bees to last year after year, whilst the existence of, say, a wasp-nest depends on the success of a single individual in tiding over the winter months. Although in the winter the activities of the hive drop to a minimum, still there is some movement of the bees and so food is imperative.

The fresh nectar poured out of the body of the bee contains 80 per cent. of water and is very fluid. Why it remains in the cell and does not pour out before the cell is 'capped' is rather a mystery. Truly, the cells are tipped a little upwards, but not enough to explain this; later, when it thickens into honey it may be said to be too viscous to flow out, yet if the comb be lightly shaken down it comes in a sweet and sticky stream. One of the most interesting factors in the conversion of nectar to honey is the removal of the superfluous water. The worker-bees after a hard day in the field return to the hive, and after depositing their evening harvest, take their stand in serried rows and begin fanning with their wings. Tireless and apparently without fatigue they continue this exercise hour after hour until the rising of the sun recalls them to their harvest fields. A good hive will in the course

of a night drive out of a skip an amount of aqueous vapour equivalent to 15 litres of water, and so gradually the amount of water is reduced from 80 per cent. in the nectar to 25 per cent. in the honey. Both worker-cells and dronecells are used for storing honey, and if the supply necessitates the building of new cells to house the precious fluid, dronecells are built, for they are easier to construct and require comparatively less wax.

Dr. Stadler has made an ingenious calculation as to the number of journeys a worker-bee makes at harvest-time, and arrives at the conclusion that each bee makes between 75 and 100 flights a day. Even bee protoplasm cannot stand such a life. Working like the students at Osborne or Dartmouth at the double' all day, standing with vibrant wings all night, occupied with the cares of the hive in between times, never having any sleep, never taking any rest, it is little wonder that the frail body of the worker is at the height of the season worn out in five or six weeks. True to her devotion to the cleanliness of the hive, she usually dies outside it, but if by any chance she dies inside, the body is removed by the survivors like any other piece of lumber. Vergil's statement put into English by Dryden :

'Their friends attend the herse, the next relations mourn

cannot be justified even by poetic licence. The friends and relations are totally indifferent. Bees know neither love nor regret.

It is the general rule amongst the social Hymenoptera that new colonies are started by the unaided efforts of a single queen, but this rule is broken by the honey-bee. Here the queen when starting a new colony is accompanied by a large number of workers and a few drones, the whole constituting the swarm. The preliminaries to swarming are many; the first is the laying of unfertilised eggs in the drone-cells old or new, for the drones take the longest time in reaching maturity; then a certain number of queen-cells are built and provided with fertilised eggs, laid one after another so that they will be ripe for entrance into the hive at successive intervals of forty-eight hours. When once the cover is placed on the first of these royal-cells, which hang usually to the number of six or eight from the lower edge of a comb,

with the mouth downwards, the reigning queen becomes restless. She intermits her egg-laying, moves uneasily hither and thither, and with an unbridled jealousy tries to break into the royal-cells and so destroy her royal offspring and possible successors. These, however, are safely guarded by the workers and seldom does she succeed. If the weather be favourable and if the provision of honey and bee-bread be ample, the workers are also seized with the demon of unrest. Those engaged in collecting nectar and honey cease their labours and remain at home. On a still, warm day in May or June numerous bees may be seen resting and motionless outside the hive; these are joined by others, and gradually they all collect together and hang like a beard in front of the hive. More bees attach themselves to the beard, and then suddenly the whole thing breaks up and the constituent bees pour into the hive and fill themselves up with honey as a provision for their future home. The excitement within the hive increases, the noise becomes louder and louder, and then suddenly a vast stream of bees, both workers and drones, with their queen, pours out of the mouth of the hive in a state of delirious tumult. Soon, however, they settle on some bough or wall chosen by the queen. Some hang to the Swarm of Bees (after support, the others hang on to them. The Schajo), as in Dr. Stadqueen is hidden within the living, seeth- ler's Biologie der Biene.' ing mass. Here the swarm may hang

FIG. 4.

for hours and even for days, but as a rule within a few hours they are guided by certain scouts, who have been investigating the possibilities of the neighbourhood, to some hollow tree or shelter under a roof, and to this retreat the whole swarm flies by the shortest possible route. The workers at once set to work to clean the new hive and to prepare the comb, and as soon as possible the queen resumes her interminable egglaying. It may be noted that whilst thus swarming the