=Honey.=--It should be clearly understood that, contrary to the assertion of the poet, bees do not "gather honey all the day, from every opening flower." Honey is essentially a product of the bee from the nectar provided by the flowers as an inducement to the visitation of bees and other insects--not for the benefit of the bee but to serve the purposes of the flowers themselves of cross-fertilisation. (See Chapter on "Flowers and Bees," page 53.) The nectar is assimilated by the bee and regurgitated in the form of honey. [Illustration: Queen on a patch of Sealed Honey (This is a diseased frame: notice the irregularity)] Honeycomb.--The honeycomb is doubtless one of the greatest marvels of the bee community. In its architecture and workmanship it forms, indeed, one of the greatest wonders in the whole realm of nature. With its multitudinous hexagonal cells, a honeycomb presents a continuous source of delight; it is so constructed that not a single atom of space is wasted and so designed that the minimum of material is used. Let it be remembered that the honeycomb, primarily, is intended to serve as a nest for the offspring of the queen--each cell to be a separate cradle for the product of the egg placed therein. As a rule, as we have noted, the cells are six-sided; the exceptions are the queen cells--which are acorn-shaped--and the intermediate cells which form buffers as it were between the worker and drone cells. The latter are always built on the outside edge of the combs. The worker cells are the smallest, and, although the bees hatched from new combs are usually larger than those from old ones, the difference is but slight. The reason for this is that as each bee is hatched it leaves behind in the cell the cocoon in which its metamorphosis was accomplished, and thus diminishes to that extent the size of the cell. =Bees-wax.=--The wax of which the cells are composed is produced from the body of the bee itself. It forms in thin plates underneath the abdomen, these plates being kneaded by the jaws into the required consistency and form. When comb-making is in progress the bees cluster together in festoons, very similar in appearance to a swarm. It is, of course, an exceedingly slow process, and the modern bee-keeper, to expedite matters in this direction, assists the bees by giving them ready-made foundation on which to build their cells. Fortunately the bees have proved amenable to this "hustling" process and are thus able to devote a larger part of their short life to the more remunerative work--from the bee-keeper's point of view--of honey-producing.