as her predecessors have done, she suddenly
leaves the work she has designed; another impatient worker replaces
her and carries it on another step, which is finished by a third one.
In the meantime others are working round about her according to the
same method of division of labor until the outer sides of each wall is
finished.

It would almost seem that an essential law of the hive was that every
worker should take a pride in its work, and that all the work should
be done in common, and so to speak, unanimously, in order that the
fraternal spirit should not be disturbed by a sense of jealousy.

Very soon the outline of the comb may be seen. In form it is still
lenticular, for the little prismatic tubes of which it is composed are
unequally prolonged, and they diminish as they get away from the
centre towards the extremities. At this moment it might be compared,
both in form and in thickness, to a human tongue hanging down from two
of the sides of the hexagonal cells which are placed back to back.

As soon as the first cells are constructed, the workers add a roof to
the second and so on to the third and to the fourth. These sets of
cells are divided by irregular intervals, and they are calculated in
such a manner that when they are made to receive their full
complement, the bees always have room enough to move about between the
parallel walls of the honeycombs.

It follows then that in making their original plan the different
thicknesses of every honeycomb must be fixed upon, and at the same
time the alley-ways which separate each must be different in turn,
and this width must be twice the height of a bee since they have to
pass each other between the upright combs.

But even the bees are not infallible, and they do not always work with
exact mechanical certainty. When they find themselves in a difficult
place they sometimes make very great blunders. One often finds that
they leave too much, and often too little, space between the
honeycombs, and they remedy these faults as well as they
can--sometimes in finishing the comb which is too near another in an
oblique line, or sometimes when they have left too much space they
interpose a smaller comb between it.

Reamur, on this subject, says:--"Since bees sometimes make mistakes
and rectify them, this must be a proof that they possess the power of
reason."

[Illustration: QUEEN BEE.]

It is known that bees make four different kinds of cells. There are
first the