usy workers, flying out of the
hive to gather honey from the flowers, either to feed the bees or to
store it into cells for future use.

They would watch them returning laden, not only with honey, but with
pollen, the yellow dust found in the inside of flowers.

Bees get covered with this powder while they are sucking the honey out
of the flowers; and they carefully brush it off their bodies with their
hairy legs, make it into lumps, and then place it in a curious kind of
basket or pocket which every bee has in the middle of each of its hind
legs. The children often saw the bees with these yellow lumps piled up
so high that it seemed a wonder they did not fall off. And so they might
have done, had it not been for the fringe of long hairs at the edge of
the basket, which, by making a kind of lid, kept the precious load safe.
They watched the bees fly into the hive, but they could not see what
happened next and what became of their treasure.

Shall I tell you?

First of all, other bees come to help them to unload; then those that
are hungry eat the honey; and what is not wanted is stored away in the
cells which those that stay at home are making.

But how do they get the wax for their cells? It does not grow in
flowers.

No; they make it out of honey which they retain instead of storing. It
comes while the bees are quiet; and many bees hang together for a long
time while the wax is forming. It then oozes out in thin flakes on their
bodies; and this they knead till it is soft enough to build with.

They bring home from the fields something besides pollen and honey; it
is a gummy substance which they get from the buds of trees. They use it
with the wax, partly as a varnish and partly to make it stronger. They
mend up broken places with it, and it answers the purpose of cement.

They use their cells for three things: to store honey, to store bee
bread, and others are used to rear the young bees,--nurseries, in fact.

Bees have a great deal to do besides getting honey and building their
cells. They have their young ones to take care of. As soon as an egg is
hatched they feed the grub with great care; and in about ten days it
wants no more food, but spins a kind of web round itself, and lies quite
still for about ten days more, when it comes out a bee, ready for work.

Only one bee lays eggs. She is the queen and the mother of all the
others. She is a good deal larger than they are, and they all obey her.

One day