The interior of a humble bee’s nest has none of the beauty and regularity of the hive. Instead of a number of vertical combs of wax there is a confused and clumsy assemblage of egg-shaped bodies of dirty-coloured wax, placed one above the other, forming a series of horizontal combs, resting upon each other and connected by small pillars of wax. These egg-shaped bodies are of different sizes; those in the middle being the largest, closely joined to each other, and each group connected with those next it by slight joinings of wax. These oval bodies are the silken cocoons spun by the young larvæ; some are closed at the top, and include inmates; others, chiefly in the lower combs, are open, the young bees having escaped from them. On the surface of the upper comb are several masses of wax of a roundish and irregular form, about an inch and a quarter in diameter and half an inch deep; these are brood cells, containing each six or seven large larvæ, lying close together upon a quantity of pollen and honey placed there for the purpose of nourishing them as soon as they are hatched. When the food is consumed, the workers make an opening in the top of the cell and introduce a new supply, taking care to seal up the cells again. The cells are sometimes split open as the grub increases in size, upon which the workers fill up the cracks with wax, as fast as they occur. It is a curious fact, that these insects make use of the empty cocoons as honey-pots, first lining them with wax, and strengthening them round the edges with a waxen ring. Some nests contain as many as fifty or sixty of these honey-pots, containing stores for daily use, and which are never sealed over like the cells of the hive bee, because all the colony except one female dies at the approach of winter, and this solitary female lies in a torpid state during that season. [Illustration: CELLS OF THE HUMBLE BEE. ]