our hours their patience is rewarded,
the honey is turned into wax, minute scales of which are secreted from
between the rings of the abdomen of each bee; this is taken off and from
it the comb is built up. It is calculated that about twenty-five pounds
of honey are used in elaborating one pound of comb, to say nothing of
the time that is lost. Hence the importance in an economical point of
view, of a recent device by which the honey is extracted and the comb
returned intact to the bees. But honey without the comb is the perfume
without the rose,--it is sweet merely, and soon degenerates into candy.
Half the delectableness is in breaking down these frail and exquisite
walls yourself, and tasting the nectar before it has lost its freshness
by the contact with the air. Then the comb is a sort of shield or foil
that prevents the tongue from being overwhelmed by the shock of the
sweet.

The drones have the least enviable time of it. Their foothold in the
hive is very precarious. They look like the giants, the lords of the
swarm, but they are really the tools. Their loud, threatening hum has
no sting to back it up, and their size and noise make them only the more
conspicuous marks for the birds.

Toward the close of the season, say in July or August, the fiat goes
forth that the drones must die; there is no further use for them. Then
the poor creatures, how they are huddled and hustled about, trying to
hide in corners and by-ways. There is no loud, defiant humming now, but
abject fear seizes them. They cower like hunted criminals. I have seen
a dozen or more of them wedge themselves into a small space between the
glass and the comb, where the bees could not get hold of them or where
they seemed to be overlooked in the general slaughter. They will also
crawl outside and hide under the edges of the hive. But sooner or later
they are all killed or kicked out. The drone makes no resistance, except
to pull back and try to get away; but (putting yourself in his place)
with one bee a-hold of your collar or the hair of your head, and another
a-hold of each arm or leg, and still another feeling for your waistbands
with his sting, the odds are greatly against you.

It is a singular fact, also, that the queen is made, not born. If the
entire population of Spain or Great Britain were the offspring of one
mother, it might be found necessary to hit upon some device by which a
royal baby could be manufactured out of an ordinary one, or e