"The foundress-bee--the name which this first beginner of a comb deserves--next applies these prepared parcels of wax against the vault (or top of a frame) of the hive, disposing them with the point of her mandibles in the direction which she wishes them to take; and she continues these manœuvres until she has employed the whole lamina that she had separated from her body, when she takes a second, proceeding in the same manner. She gives herself no care to compress the molecules of wax which she has heaped together. She is satisfied if they adhere to each other. At length she leaves her work, and is lost in the crowd of her companions. Another succeeds and resumes the employment, then a third. All follow the same plan of placing their little masses, and if any one, by chance, gives them a contrary direction, another coming removes them to their proper place. "The result of all these operations is a mass or little wall of wax, with uneven surfaces, five or six lines (twelfths of an inch) long, two lines high, and half a line thick, which descends perpendicularly. In this first work is no angle nor any trace of the figure of the cells. It is a simple partition in a right line without any inflection. "The wax-makers having thus laid a foundation of a comb, are succeeded by the nurse-bees [here Huber is wrong[2]], which are alone competent to model and perfect the work. The former are the labourers, who convey the stone and mortar; the latter the masons, who work them up into the form which the intended structure requires. One of these bees now places itself horizontally on the vault (or bar-frame) of the hive, its head corresponding to the centre of the mass or wall which the wax-makers have left, and which is to form the partition of the comb into two opposite assemblages of cells; and with its mandibles (jaws), rapidly moving its head, it moulds in that side of the wall a cavity which is to form the base of one of the cells, to the diameter of which it is equal. When it has worked some minutes it departs, and another takes its place, deepening the cavity, heightening its lateral margins by heaping up the wax to right and left, by means of its teeth and fore-feet, and giving to them a more upright form. More than twenty bees successively employ themselves in this work. [Footnote 2: See remark immediately preceding the quotation.] "When arrived at a certain point, other bees begin on the yet untouched and opposite side of the mass, and commencing the bottom of two cells, are in turn relieved by others. While still engaged in this labour the wax-makers return, and add to the mass, augmenting its extent in every way, the builders again continuing their operations. After having worked the bottom of the cells of the first row into their proper forms, they polish them, and give them their finish, while others begin the outline of a new series.