Still watching the outside life of the hive in the old bee-garden, many other interesting things come to light. In such an establishment, even if it be only an old-fashioned straw skep, perhaps more than twenty thousand individuals are located; and obviously some regular system of cleaning and scavenging is indispensable. This work can be seen now, going on uninterruptedly in the midst of all the other busy enterprises. Every moment bees come labouring out, bearing particles of refuse, which they throw over the edge of the foot-board, and at once shoulder their way back for another load. Other bees appear, carrying the bodies of comrades who have died in the hive; and every now and then one comes struggling through the crowd, bearing high above her a strange and ghastly thing, perfect replica of herself, but white throughout, save for its black beady eyes. This is the unborn bee, dead in its cradle-cell. Infant mortality is an evil not yet overcome even by the doughty honey-bee, and many are carried out thus, especially in early spring. Watching these undertakers of the hive in their gruesome but necessary work, a singular fact can be noted. While all other debris is merely cast over the brink of the entrance-board, where it accumulates day by day on the grass below, these dead larvæ are never disposed of thus. They are carried right away, their bearers taking wing and flying straight off over the hedgerow, to drop them at harmless distance from the neighbourhood of the hive. There is still another kind of work going briskly forward round the gates of the bee-city. Certain among these stay-at-home bees seem to exercise a sort of common overseership. They help those weighed down with too heavy a cargo to reach the city gates. If a lump of pollen is dropped in the general scuffle, these bees seize it and take it into the hive. Sometimes a bee comes eddying downward, smothered from head to foot with pollen, like a golden miller, and she is immediately pounced upon by these superintendents, and combed free of her incommodious treasure. Others see to the grooming of the young bees, about to essay their first flight. The youngster sits up, protruding her tongue to its fullest extent, while half a dozen bees gather round her, licking and stroking her on every side. At last her toilette is done, and she is liberated, when, with a little flutter of her wings, she lifts high into the blue air and sunshine and makes off with the rest to the clover-fields, glittering afar off in the joyous midday light.