Between the brood-combs the nurses are feeding the young larvæ, or clearing out the empty cells, or sealing over the full-grown nymphs for their pre-natal slumber. Hard by, the sowers are at their vital work, driving their living seed-barrow, the queen, over the combs. Elsewhere the wax-makers hang in a silent, densely packed cluster. Overhead, the new honey-combs are growing; the masons building up the cell-walls, while the engineers devise means and ends, calculate strains, put in a strut here, a stay there, or flying buttress from one comb to another, or cut new passageways where the traffic seems too congested for the old thoroughfares of the hive. On all sides the scavenging bees go to and fro, picking up every particle of refuse, and carrying it safely away. Winged undertakers drive their trade in the midst of the throng, bearing the corpses of their comrades, old and young, towards the entrance, and flying away with them into the sunlight of the young spring day. There is the ventilating army outside the city gates, skilfully organised in relays, so that, day and night, a constant circulation of air is maintained. There are the guard-bees close by, watching all in-comers and out-goers. There is a sort of General Purposes Committee ready outside the threshold with a helping hand for all: succouring the overladen, grooming down any in need of such assistance, gathering up fallen treasure, or, as it would seem, taking careful note of the weather for their next official report. And all through the hours of sunshine, in unnumbered thousands, the foragers are charging to and fro, some bringing nectar, some staggering in under mighty loads of pollen, others with full water-sacs, still more dragging behind them lumps of the curious cement called by the ancients Propolis, and used for so many different purposes in the daily work of the hive. [Picture: The honey-bee (enlarged) from life: and as some ancient draughtsmen depicted them] And it all goes on with the regularity of a well ordered human settlement. There is complexity, yet no confusion; there is speed without hurry Each busy gang of labourers has apparently a distinct and definite task allotted to it by the central hive-authority; co-operation and progress are, to all appearances, deified cause and effect in all the affairs of the hive.