Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/513

Rh Huber sums up the conclusions of all His experiments upon wax:

 "1. That the wax comes from honey. "2. That the honey is also a food of the first necessity for bees. "3. That flowers do not always contain honey, as has been imagined; that this secretion is subject to the variations of the atmosphere, and that the days when it is abundant are very rare in our climate. "4. That it is the saccharine part of the honey which enables the bees to produce wax. "5. That raw sugar yields more wax than honey, or refined sugar. "6. That the dust of the stamina does not contain the principles of wax. "7. That this dust is not the food of the adult bees, and that they do not collect it for themselves. "8. That the pollen affords the only aliment which is proper for the young, but that this substance must undergo a peculiar elaboration in the stomachs of the bees, to be converted into an aliment which is always appropriated to their sex, their age, and their wants; since the best microscopes do not show the particles of pollen or their coverings in the liquor prepared by the working-bees."

The bees, when wax is needed, gorge themselves with honey, and hang suspended in festoons or curtains for about twenty-four hours. During this repose, which Réaumur supposed was for rest and recuperation, the honey is digested and the wax makes its appearance partially under the overlapping rings of the abdomen. No other organ for the secretion of wax was found by the exquisite dissections of Mdlle. Jurine, or any of her successors, except the cellular lining of the pockets.

These scales a worker disengages by means of the pincers on its legs, and seizing the scale in its mouth. "We remarked," says Huber, "that with its claws it turned the wax in every necessary direction; that the edge of the scale was immediately broken down, and the fragments, having been accumulated in the hollow of the mandibles, issued forth like a very narrow ribbon, impregnated with a frothy liquid by the tongue. The tongue assumed the most varied shapes and performed the most complicated operations; being sometimes flattened like a trowel, and at others pointed like a pencil; and, after imbuing the whole substance of the ribbon, pushed it forward into the mandibles, where it was drawn out a second time but in an opposite direction."

These particles of wax thus rendered adhesive, ductile, and opaque, by working in the mouth, were applied to the vault of the hive. A wall of wax was begun in an inverted position, depending from the top of the hive, by this bee, which is called the founder-bee. When its store of wax is exhausted, another bee follows and proceeds in the same way, guided by the work of its predecessor. When the wall was nearly an inch in length, and about two-thirds as high as the