Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 136.djvu/13

 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

JULY, 1925

THE BEE'S KNEES

BY CHARLES D. STEWART

A BEE in the field is engaged in gather- ing three sorts of raw material — flour, varnish, and sirup; all of them com- modities which present problems in handling and transportation.

That the yellow pollen of the flowers is simply flour to a bee may be gathered from the fact that beekeepers, in sea- sons when pollen is scarce, set out little troughs of rye flour which serves the bees instead and induces them to raise young earlier in the season than they otherwise would. Young bees, like young children, cannot thrive and de- velop on sweets alone; and so the pol- len, a highly nitrogenous product, is the food of the young bee during the days when it is truly a baby in the cradle, occupying the open cell in larval form. Honey, a form of sugar, supplies the bee, as it does the human worker, with a vast amount of heat and energy; but it lacks the elements needed in repair and growth. The older bees eat the pollen in small quantity also, a certain proportion of it being necessary to health.

As for varnish, the bee gets hers from the same source that man does — the resinous exudation of trees. But the bee finds the readiest supply on sticky buds such as those of the balm of

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Gilead tree, and, in lesser quantity, on the buds of poplar, horse-chestnut, willow, and hollyhock. While we are accustomed to think of the bee as a hoarder of honey, entirely possessed with her passion for sweets, the fact is that every worker bee has varnish on her mind. She will gather it as eagerly and hurry home with it in as high a state of happiness as if she were work- ing in nectar or in pollen. A swarm of bees that has found suitable quarters in the decayed hollowof a tree will clean it out scrupulously, removing every particle of loose dirt and rubbish, and may then repair its surface until they have given it a complete coat of var- nish. Those that are kept in the usual ‘patent’ hives stop up every crack and crevice with their resin; and they cement the lid on so tight that the beekeeper has to carry a special tool to pry it off. Mixed with wax it makes the wax stickier and hardens it, and this preparation they use as a basis and buttress with which to fasten their combs securely. If a mouse, or other large unwieldy animal, invades the hive and dies there, a problem in sani- tary engineering has to be met and dealt with. Varnish-gatherers set to work at once, and in a short time they