Honey Bees
When honey bees visit flowers, they sip, they snack, and they gather supplies. Powdery pollen sticks to their fuzzy bodies. Sweet nectar fills their stomachs. Back at their nest, honey bees store pollen and nectar in hollow tubes made of wax. In some of the tubes, baby bees grow from eggs. Baby bees eat a mixture of pollen and honey. Honey bees use the nectar they collect to make honey and beeswax. They chew the wax to make it soft and then shape it into tubes. Row after row, the tubes begin to form a layer of honeycomb. Layer by layer, honey bees build up their nest. They keep the nest safe, strong, and dry in sunshine, rain, or snow.
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen
On a sturdy frame of metal pipes and wood, Degas built a sculpture of a young ballerina. Like a real ballet dancer, the sculpture was strong but looked delicate. Degas wrapped fabric padding with metal wire and rope to shape the body. Then he covered the whole structure with clay. On top of the clay, Degas layered melted beeswax—thick in some parts, thin in others. He shaped the wax into a face, arms, and legs. With a flat tool, he smoothed the wax to make it look like skin. But over time, Little Dancer changed. Its arms and hands cracked, and the fabric tutu fell apart. Today, copies of Little Dancer stand in museums all over the world. Made of bronze, they will last for years to come.
