These last--that is, the _royal cells_--are generally only about twenty in number, in a hive containing 20,000 bees. Constructed of a mixture of wax and of propolis, resembling a rounded thimble, they form tubes of half an inch long, turned towards the exterior, and placed always vertically, in such a manner as to appear detached from the comb. The weight of a _royal cell_ is equivalent to that of a hundred other cells. The bees spare nothing to make it comfortable and spacious. "It is quite a Louvre," says Réaumur. But independently of their use as cradles, these cells serve as storehouses for honey. A few of these are used in turn for both these purposes, but a great number are reserved exclusively for stores of honey and pollen. This is brought, as we have already said, in the form of pellets, in the baskets which the hind legs form. The working bee, when it has gathered it, pushes it into the cell, pressing it with its hind-legs. Another then arrives, and kneads up the mass to make it adhesive. The bee brings the honey in its first stomach, and disgorges it into one of the cells where it is to be kept. However, it is not always by carrying its honey into a cell that the worker is relieved of it, often finding an opportunity to deliver it on the way. [Illustration: Fig. 319.--Interior of a Hive.] "When it meets," says Réaumur,[85] "any of its companions who want food, and who have not had time to go and get any, it stops, erects and stretches out its trunk, so that the opening by which the honey may be taken out is a little way beyond the mandibles. It pushes the honey towards this opening. The other bees, who know well enough that it is from there they must take it, introduce the end of their trunks and suck it up. The bee which has not been stopped on its road, often goes to the places where other bees are working, that is, to those places where other bees are occupied, either in constructing new cells, or in polishing or bordering the cells already built; it offers them honey, as if to prevent them from being under the necessity of leaving their work to go and get it themselves." [85] "Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Insectes," tome v., p. 449.