In considering the nature of the individual species of bees inhabiting a hive, an acquaintance with which, we repeat, is indispensable before' converting their la bours to use, we have to notice some of the peculiarities exhibited by workers. It is to this great class that the welfare of a hive properly belongs : without their incessant aid, the males, females, and even the brood itself would quickly perish ; and if the presence of a queen be essential to their safety, they are no less re quisite for her preservation.
Certain facts, we have already remarked, tend to 'establish, that all workers are originally females ; and in most, perhaps in every hive, some are found laying eggs, which will be future drones. But here view ing them as a large class of the community, consisting of twenty, thirty, nay forty thousand individuals, we behold them employed in various purposes extremely diversified for the general good. They are charged with cleaning and preparing the cells appropriated for the embryos of their own kind, of the queens, and the males : they collect the honey, obtain wax, and build the combs : likewise, they gather a particular sub stance, (resinous, as is supposed,) with which all the crevices of the hive are closed, and its inside co vered. After the queen has deposited her eggs, the workers supply the food adapted for the worms of each species, and regulate the proportions, so as to serve until the last metamorphosis is undergone : and they seal every cell with a covering different, accord ing to the different worm included, at the proper and appointed time. Nor are these the limits of their occupations ; while some guard the queen, construct the combs, and watch over the necessities of the young, others keep constant watch, day and night, at the entrance of the hive : if a stranger bee, a wasp, or noxious insect appears, it is instantly repelled or destroyed : even should a queen, which, on usual oc casions, is treated with such unequivocal marks of re gard, be introduced to the hive of any swarm but her own, the workers immediately seize and restrain her, and, without being wounded with their stings, the confinement she suffers is such, that she sometimes dies of absolute suffocation.
All the operative parts of the ceconomy of the hive are entrusted to the workers ; and as the collection of honey and eumbs which they construct are the substances converted to our use, and indeed is the main purpose of our cultivating them in numbers, it is proper that we should elucidate the manner in which this is effected. Honey is a vegetable secretion, which
appears at different seasons of the year, especially when flowers in general blow. We can readily un derstand how it is stored up by the bees : they lick it with the proboscis from the flowers ; it is swallow ed ; and on their return to the hive, it is disgorged, not from the trunk, but the mouth, into the cells. Only a small portion is collected by each, but the united labours of thousands produce an abundant harvest. Reaumur has calculated, that within an hour 3000 bees have returned from their collections to a hive, whose population did not exceed 18,000; and in six days, Swammerdam, if we rightly under stand his expressions, found nearly 4000 cells con structed by a new swarm, consisting of less than 6000 bees. Some of the cells filled with honey are destined for the daily consumption of the bees, and others are sealed up and reserved for times of neces sity. Many of the labourers free themselves of their collections before reaching the cells, by bestowing them on their neighbours ; the trunks of the latter are seen extended, and they receive the honey with them as it is disgorged.
Honey being a vegetable product, its properties depend entirely on the nature of the plants from which it is collected : one kind is of the finest flavour, delicious to the taste, pure and transparent; another is entirely of a different consistence, dark, greenish, tenacious or bitter ; and a third kind has been known to produce deleterious effects, which were almost, if not completely, fatal to human life. Dioseorides, Pliny, and various ancient authors, speak of honey in the East being dangerous in certain years ; and Xe nophon relates, that when the army of ten thousand approached Trebisond, the soldiers having partaken copiously of honey found in the neighbourhood, were affected like persons inebriated; several, on whom it had more violent consequences, became furious, and seemed as if in the agonies of death. Though none of them died, all were extremely weak for three days. In recent times, we are told of the pernicious effects of a particular kind of honey collected in America ; and plants grow in the Archipelago, the honey of which is said to occasion vomiting. Thus Don Felix Azara informs us,' that there is a particular kind of honey collected in Paraguay, called cabatalu, which occasions a severe headach, and produces as perfect intoxication as ensues from brandy ; while another kind brings on convulsions, attended with the most excruciating pains, which last thirty hours.