Bees are seen laden with a yellowish substance in very considerable quantities, which also is stored up in the hive. This is not wax, as is commonly sup posed, but either the pollen of flowers, which is used for feeding their young, or propolis for stopping the crevices of their dwelling. The combs are con structed of wax, which owes its origin to honey : or it may be formed from sugar, the saccharine part of which constitutes one principal ingredient of honey. Naturalists have adopted many conjectures concern ing the mode in which it is elaborated by the bees. In general they supposed that the yellowish pellets adhering to their limbs were swallowed, and after wards disgorged as wax in a state of purity. The process is still obscure, but recent experiments seem to afford reason for believing that it may transude between the scales of the abdomen ; and the appear ance presented by wax on such places led former ob servers to affirm, that it was collected there instead of on the limbs. It is established by satisfactory experiments, that, whatever be its issue from the body of the bee, it originates from honey. Mutual relations subsist in their elementary principles, and the one is dependent on the other. Those years un productive of honey arc also unproductive of wax ; and we often sec swarms which begin their collec tions with the most promising appearance, still make but little progress, and terminate with acquiring too small a quantity of honey for their future subsistence. In these cases, wax is sparingly provided also. What led to a narrow investigation of the preparation of honey from wax, was a naturalist observing that bees continued carrying quantities of the yellow pellets or pollen into hives quite full of comb, and where there was no room to construct more ; and on the other hand, that they enlarged the combs of hives contain ing only a small portion, and did so without carrying in the pellets at all. Succeeding experiments proved that the pollen which they collect from the anthem of flowers, is used solely for feeding their young, be ing the same which, in ordinary description, we call farina, or bee bread ; and that they will take it grain by grain in their teeth, to transmit it into the mouths of the larva : a remarkable trait of patient industry. In ascertaining the mode by which wax was produced from honey, M. Huber confined a swarm of bees in a straw hive to an apartment, along with a quantity or honey and water necessary for their subsistence. The honey was exhausted in five days, and five combs of the finest snow-white wax were then found sus pended from the arch of the hive. Lest this might have been the produce of the farina carried in by the bees when their confinement commenced, all the combs were removed, and the imprisonment of the bees re peated. But the result was the same; they formed other five combs of the finest and whitest wax. It is the saccharine part of the honey which produces wax ; and.bees supplied with equal portions of honey, and of sugar reduced to a syrup, produce a greater quantity of wax from the latter. From a pound of refined sugar reduced to a syrup, and clarified with eggs, a swarm of bees produced ten drams and fifty two grains of wax, darker in colour than what they extract from honey : From a pound of dark brown sugar, they prepared twenty-two drama of very white wax, and the like from the same weight of sugar of the maple. Wax is produced sooner, as well as in greater proportion, from sugar than from honey ; and the darker the sugar, the finer is the wax. Repeated observations prove, that the secretion of honey in flowers is powerfully promoted by the electricity of the atmosphere ; and bees never labour more actively than during humid sultry weather, and when a storm is approaching. Sometimes the secretion of honey is entirely suspended by the state of the weather, which occasions a total interruption of the labours of the bees ; and if this be too long protracted, a populous hive may actually die in the midst of slimmer. The odour exhaled by the hives, and the size of the bees, arc always certain indications whether the flowers contain honey. When numbers of bees return from their excursions with the belly thick and cylindri cal, it shews they are gorged with honey; and these arc exclusively the workers in wax. The bell) of those performing the other functions, always pre serves its ovoidal form, and does not sensibly increase in size. Although the flowers be destitute of honey, bees still are able to store up quantities of farina or pollen necessary for feeding their young. Part of it is immediately given to them, and, as is affirmed, what is superfluous is reserved in cells. Sixty-five hives, the whole of which exhibited workers in wax, were examined on the 18th of June, when the coun try was covered with flowers, and while the bees ac tively pursued their collections. Those returning to old hives, having no cells to construct, deposited their honey in the combs, or gave to their companions ; but those of new swarms converted their honey into wax, and hastened to build combs for the reception of their young. Chill and showery weather inter rupted their labours, and the combs received no ad dition by the construction of new cells. The weather however altered, the chesnut and elm were in flourish, and the thermometer on the first of July rose to 77° : the bees resumed their labours with the utmost acti vity from that day until the 16th, both in honey and wax. But thenceforward no honey being produced, they collected quantities of pollen only ; and the odour of the flowers shewcd there was nothing excepting an inconsiderable secretion of honey at intervals, barely sufficient for subsisting, the bees. It was found, on examining the sixty-five hives in the end of August, that, after. the middle of July, the bees had ceased to
work in wax ; that they had stored up a great quan tity of pollen ; that the honey of the old hives was very much diminished, and in the new ones scarce any remained ; as what was at first collected had been consumed in the preparation of wax. Thus it ap pears, that, in the natural state, honey is the source of wax, and the food of bees ; that its secretion from flowers is affected by adventitious circumstances; and that its qualities are different in different countries. No elementary principles of wax reside in pollen ; this substance is collected solely to feed the young con tained in hives, and the perfect bees themselves never live upon it.
The propolis is another substance collected from plants, which is extremely useful to bees. Besides the purposes of stopping crevices, covering the inte rior surface of the hive, the sticks supporting the combs, and gluing the hive to the board on which it stands, bees employ it in greater portions at once. Stranger animals of small size entering a hive are im mediately stung to death, and then dragged by the bees to the outside : there are few persons who have not seen that a dead fly, or bee laid on their board, is quickly carried away and dropped at a distance : it seems the nature of these insects not to endure any filth or corruption in their habitation. Should a larger animal, such as a snail, make its way into the hive, it does not escape; it is put to death, but the bees are unable to divest themselves of its body. Maraldi relates, that he saw the dead body of a snail totally covered with propolis, and thus prevented from spreading infection in the hive ; and Reaumur tells us, that a hell snail having fixed itself on the pane of a glass hive, waiting until the moistness of weather should be an inducement for it to move, the bees encircled the mouth of the shell with so thick a bed of propolis, that the animal, unable to moisten it as it moistens its own gluten, was arrested on the spot. The original source of the propolis is not yet per fectly understood : it is much more tenacious, and attains a greater degree of hardness than wax : those bees that return laden with it, owing to its tenacity, experience considerable difficulty, even with the aid of their companions, in divesting themselves of the load. M. Ducarne observes, several times I have seen bees occupied in collecting, or rather in tearing away with their teeth, the propolis of old hives which I had exposed to the sun ; and this appeared so labo rious, and the animals pulled so forcibly, that I thought their heads would have been separated from their bodies." The structure of the cells, which are exclusively the production of the workers, has excited admiration in every contemplative mind; and it is demonstrable, that their figure is the best adapted for containing the greatest possible quantity in the least possible space. A number of cells united constitute the comb, be tween twelve and thirteen inches square of which, Reaumur calculated, would contain 9000. The pri mary object of the cells seems to be for propagating the young ; after these have gained maturity, they tire cleaned out and filled with honey ; but there are cells also destined for this purpose from the beginning. The same cells may be employed for several succes sive broods, and when the whole have come to per fection, they are appropriated for the winter stores: those at the top of a comb are neatest and best made, as well as of better materials, compared with those at the bottom. In the shape and size of the comb, bees are guided by circumstances; a small ca vity is totally filled with equal combs, while in one of greater dimensions there may be some large, and others not one-fourth of the size. By a law of na ture, from which they seldom deviate, the foundation of the second comb is laid parallel to that of the first, and the successive combs are generally parallel to each other. Sometimes they are seen at right angles, or apparently misplaced, which probably results from accidents having an influence on the earlier part of their construction. There is usually the distance of four lines between each; and should the comb, in its construction, have taken an oblique direction, it is afterwards brought into a more perpendicular line by the bees, which diminishes the vacancy inter vening. Combs originate in the top or arch of a hive, and are worked downwards ; but should the upper part be removed, it is said the bees will work upwards to fill the cavity. In order to shorten the courses which they would necessarily have to make round the surface of large combs, they open various communications through them, and also open pas sages between their edges and the side of the hive ; at least we are not acquainted with any other pur poses of such perforations found in them. The cells eomposing a comb are of three kinds, corresponding to the three species of bees ; but there are consider 'able irregularities in the structure of all : neither do tlicse.of the workers invariably exhibit that perfect hexagonal figure which many persons expect to find. It may appear singular how bees horizontal cells quite full of honey, and yet prevent it from esca ping. Perhaps it is partly retained by its own viscosity, and from adhesion to the sides of a tube of such small diameter. Each cell is sealed with a flat covering most ingeniously devised: it is Nature, however, that must have done so. A circle is formed around the mouth of the cell, which is gradually diminished by other concentric circles, until the aperture remains a point capable of being closed by a single grain of wax.