The bee has six legs, three on either side. Each leg is composed of several joints, having articulations like a man's arm, for the thigh, the leg, and the foot. The foremost pair of these are the shortest; with them the bee unloads the little pellets from the baskets on her thighs: the middle pair are somewhat longer, and the hindmost the longest of all. On the outside of the middle joint of these last there is, in each leg, a small cavity, in the form of a marrow spoon, called the "pollen basket." In Plate I., fig. 2 _b_ shows the inner side of the hind leg and pollen brush; 2 _b*_, same figure, the outer side and pollen basket. The legs are covered with hairs, more particularly the edges of the cavity mentioned, in which the kneaded pollen requires to be maintained securely. In this they convey those loads of pollen which are so constantly seen carried into a hive. This basket, or pollen groove, in the thigh is peculiar to the worker; neither queen nor drone have anything of the kind. Another provision of the bee's limbs consists in a pair of hooks attached to each foot, with their points opposite to each other, by means of which the bees suspend themselves from the roof or sides of hives, and cling to each other as they do at swarming time or prior to and during the formation of new comb, thus forming a living curtain. In these circumstances, each bee, with its two fore claws, takes hold of the two hinder legs of the one next above it. This mode of suspension is, no doubt, agreeable to them, although the uppermost bees appear to be dragged by the weight of the whole. Wildman supposed that bees had a power of distending themselves with air, to acquire buoyancy, and thus lessen the burden of the topmost bees. They find no difficulty in extricating themselves from the mass; the most central of the group can make its way without endangering the stability of the grape-like cluster.