The design of every comb is sketched out, and the first rudiments are laid, by one single bee. This founder-bee forms a block, out of a rough mass of wax, drawn partly from its own resources, but principally from those of other bees, which furnish materials, in quick succession, from the receptacles under their bellies, taking out the plates of wax with their hind feet, and carrying them to their mouths with their fore-feet, where the wax is moistened and masticated, till it becomes soft and ductile.
Thus, “filter’d through yon flutterer’s folded mail,
Clings the cool’d wax, and hardens to a scale.
Swift, at the well-known call, the ready train
(For not a buz boon Nature breathes in vain,)
Spring to each falling flake, and bear along
Their glossy burdens to the builder throng.”
Evans.
The architect-in-chief, who lays, as it were, the first stone of this and each successive edifice, determines the relative position of the combs, and their distances from each other: these foundations serve as guides for the ulterior labours of the wax-working bees, and of those which sculpture the cells, giving them the advantage of the margin and angles already formed.
The expedients resorted to by that ingenious naturalist, Huber, unfolded the whole process. He saw each bee extract with its hind feet one of the plates of wax from under the scales where they were lodged, and carrying it to the mouth, in a vertical position, turn it round; so that every part of its border was made to pass, in succession, under the cutting edge of the jaws: it was thus soon divided into very small fragments; and a frothy liquor was poured upon it from the tongue, so as to form a perfectly plastic mass. This liquor gave the wax a whiteness and opacity which it did not possess originally, and at the same time rendered it tenacious and ductile. The issuing of this masticated mass from the mouth was, no doubt, what misled Reaumur, and caused him to regard wax as nothing more than digested pollen.
The mass of wax, prepared by the assistants , is applied by the architect-bee to the roof or bottom of the hive, as the case may be; and thus a block is raised of a semi-lenticular shape, thick at top and tapering towards the edges. When of sufficient size, a cell is sculptured on one side of it, by the wax-working bees, who relieve one another in succession, sometimes to the number of twenty, before the cell is completely fashioned. At the back and on each side of this first cell, two others are sketched out and excavated. By this proceeding the foundations of two cells are laid, the line betwixt them corresponding with the centre of the opposite cell. As the comb extends, the first excavations are rendered deeper and broader; and when a pyramidal base is finished, the bees build up walls from its edges, so as to complete, what may be called, the prismatic part of the cell. Every succeeding row of cells is formed by precisely similar steps, until there is sufficient scope for the simultaneous employment of many workers.
“These, with sharp sickle, or with sharper tooth,
Pare each excrescence, and each angle smooth,
Till now, in finish’d pride, two radiant rows,
Of snow-white cells, one mutual base disclose.
Six shining pannels gird each polish’d round.
The door’s fine rim, with waxen fillet bound,
While walls so thin, with sister walls combin’d.
Weak in themselves, a sure dependence find.”
Evans.
The pyramidal bases and lateral plates are successively formed, with surprising rapidity: the latter are lengthened as the comb proceeds, for the original semi-lenticular form is preserved till towards the last, when if the hive or box be filled, the sides of all the cells receive such additions as give them equal depth.
The cells intended for the drones are considerably larger, and more substantial, than those for the working bees, and, being later formed, usually appear near the bottom of the combs. Last of all are built the royal cells, the cradles of the infant queens: of these there are usually three or four, and sometimes ten or twelve, in a hive, attached commonly to the central part, but not unfrequently to the edge or side of the comb. Mr. Hunter says that he has seen as many as thirteen royal cells in a hive, and that they have very little wax in their composition, not one-third, the rest he conceives to be farina. Such is the genuine loyalty of bees, that the wax which they employ with so much geometric œconomy, in the construction of hexagonal cells, is profusely expended on the mansions of the royal bee-nymph, one of these exceeding in weight a hundred of the former. They are not interwoven with them, but suspended perpendicularly, their sides being nearly parallel to the mouths of the common cells, several of which are sacrificed to support them.