Pollen and honey form the food of honey bees and their developing brood. Both of these are plant products which are only modified somewhat by the manipulation to which they are subjected by the bees and are then stored in waxen cells if not wanted for immediate use. Pollen, the fertilizing dust of flowers, is carried home by the bees in small pellets held in basket-like depressions on each of the hind legs. The hairs covering the whole surface of the bee's body are more or less serviceable in enabling the bee to collect pollen, but those on the under side of the abdomen are most likely to get well dusted, and the rows of hairs, nine in number, known as pollen brushes, located on the inner surface of the first tarsal joint (fig. 7, _b_), are then brought into use to brush out this pollen. When these brushes are filled with pollen the hind legs are crossed during flight and the pollen combed out by the spine-like hairs that fringe the posterior margin of the tibial joint--that above a in fig. 7. The outer surface of this joint is depressed, and this, with the rows of curved hairs on the anterior margin and the straighter ones just referred to forms a basket like cavity known as the corbiculum or pollen basket, represented by the longest joints of the legs, A, B, and C, fig. 7. Into this the pollen falls, and with the middle pair of legs is tamped down for transportation to the hive. Having arrived there, the bee thrusts its hind legs into a cell located as near to the brood nest as may be, and loosening the pellets lets them fall into the bottom of the cell. The tibial spur (fig. 7, _e_) on each middle leg is, as Professor Cheshire has pointed out, probably of use in prying the pellets out. The latter are simply dropped into cells and left for some other bee to pack down by kneading or pressing with its mandibles. Various colors--yellow, brown, red, slate, etc., according to the kinds of flowers from which gathered--frequently show in layers in the same cell. Often when partly filled with pollen the cell is then filled up with honey and sealed more or less hermetically with wax. The bees store the pollen, for convenience in feeding, above and at the sides of the brood and as near to it as possible, the comb on each side of the brood nest being generally well stored with it. [Illustration: Fig. 8.--Head and tongue of Apis mellifera worker (magnified twelve times), _a_, Antenna, or feeler; _m_, mandibula, or outer jaw; _g_, gum flap, or epipharynx; _mxp_, maxillary palpus; _pg_, paraglossa; _mx_, maxilla, or inner jaw; _lp_, labial palpus, _l_, ligula, or tongue; _b_, bouton, or spoon of the same. (Reduced from Cheshire.)] NECTAR AND HONEY.