Page:How to Keep Bees.djvu/80

52 The wax glands, when studied by the histologists, are found to consist each of a specialised area of the layer of cells that form the active living part of the body-wall of the insect. When active these cells are much thicker than the corresponding cells in other parts of the body-wall; but if examined during the winter, they do not differ greatly in appearance from other cells of the hypodermis. (Plate XXV, Fig. 5.)

When wax is needed, a certain number of self-elected citizens gorge with honey and hang up in chains or curtains, each bee clinging by her front feet to the hind feet of the one above her, like Japanese acrobats; and there they remain, sometimes for two days, until the wax scales appear pushed out from every pocket. It is not hard to understand that, since much honey is needed for the manufacture of wax, a bee after filling with the raw material would produce much more wax by keeping quiet than by using any of the gorged honey for energy in moving about and working. But the necessity of "holding hands" while this work goes on must ever remain to us another occult evidence of the close relations of the citizens in the bee commune. (Plate X.)

While most of the wax is produced from these quiescent suspended individuals, yet any bee-keeper who is observant has discovered that at the height of the honey season many of the workers coming in laden from the fields will have wax scales protruding from some or all of the pockets. We once captured one of our bees, working on a white clover blossom,