Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/512

496 he determined the fact that these insects recognize their queen, and communicate the fact of her presence, by the crossing of their antennae with those of other bees. The effect produced by the amputation of the antenna; has been already described, and shows of what vital importance this organ is to them.

Huber made many experiments upon the respiration of bees, proving them to absorb oxygen, and emit carbonic acid. A number of live bees expired instantly in mephriticnephritic [sic] air; but others, when exposed to it in a torpid condition, were unaffected, showing that it was respiration, not contact, which caused their death. Two stigmata, the respiratory organs of insects, were discovered by Huber in addition to the two already known. Eggs and larvae, he showed, also absorb oxygen and evolve carbonic acid. The air of the hives was repeatedly examined by Huber, and found to be very nearly as pure as the outside air. This fact directed his observations more closely to the economy of the hive, and he discovered that the bees maintained a systematic ventilation. Files arrange themselves in lines radiating from the door, and, by keeping their wings in rhythmical motion, generate currents of air. If the hive be sealed up, the bees at first fan violently, but in forty-five minutes the whole swarm lies apparently dead from suffocation.

It is necessary to pass over the curious provisions made by them against their enemy the Sphinx atropos, and Huber's discovery of the origin of propolis, to the last point which he has made luminous by his observations, the origin of wax, and its use in bee-architecture. Réaumur discovered that pollen-dust, when submerged in water, swells and finally bursts, and from the grains exudes an oily liquor, which he took to be the substance converted, in the body of the bee, into wax. This had been so long an accepted fact, that Huber did not doubt its correctness till an observation of Burneus's induced him to make a series of experiments upon the subject. He confined one swarm of bees, giving them only honey, and another, supplying them with nothing but pollen. Seven times new comb was found in the first hive and removed, while none at all was made in the second. Wax is secreted like fat in other animals, from saccharine matter, and it accumulates, in layers of delicate white spicules, in the wax-pockets of the bees. There are six depressions, lined with a reticulated membrane, in the lower side of the worker's body, between the abdominal rings.

The reason for gathering pollen was, then, a matter of interest. It was manufactured not for food, as bees lived perfectly well without it. By close scrutiny Huber discovered that the workers swallow the pollen, and after a time regurgitate it as food for the larvae. Marked bees were seen to partake of the pollen, to ascend to the nurseries and plunge their bodies head-foremost into the cells, containing worms. After their withdrawal the cells were examined, and found to contain a supply of the jelly which constitutes the food of the larvæ.