Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/131

Rh effected the secretion of wax in the body of the bee. And further, to ascertain whether the saccharine principle were the real source of wax, he supplied the captive bees with sugar in the form of syrup; the result was still the same; wax was produced, and that in a shorter period, and in greater abundance than from honey. As the reverse of this experiment would prove whether the pollen or farina itself had the same property, instead of supplying the bees with honey or sugar, he fed them only on fruit and farina. They were kept eight days in captivity under a glass bell, with a comb having only farina in the cells, yet they neither made wax, nor were scales seen under the rings. It is but justice to the Scotch bee-master, Bonner, to remark, that, amidst the errors on the subject which prevailed in his day, he had a strong impression of the real source of wax, and the manner of its secretion. In this, as in other points of bee-science, his natural shrewdness and acuteness of observation led him to the very verge of some of the most important of those facts in the natural history of bees which we owe to the more scientific researches of Huber. "I have sometimes," says he, "been inclined to think that wax might be an excrescence, exudation, or production from the bodies of the bees, and that, as the Queen can lay eggs when she pleases, so, if need require, the working bees can produce wax from the substance of their own bodies. If this conjecture be right, it will follow, of course, that all the food which the bee takes, contributes to the formation of wax, in the same manner as