196 The Book of Bugs. 



flame in you a desire to know of these things for yourself 

 first-hand, which is as much better than book-learning as 

 sunlight is better than candlelight. 



Besides honey and pollen, another thing the bees get 

 from plants, but which the bee-master had just as soon 

 they did not, is that clean-smelling glue called " propolis." 

 When wild bees made their nests in bushes, hollow trees, 

 and clefts of rock, it was bully stuff to keep the weather 

 out and make rough places smooth, but it is an awful 

 nuisance in the patent hive, and it gums the bee-keeper's 

 fingers together. Alcohol will take away the gummi- 

 ness, but not the greenish-yellow stain, which nothing 

 seems to feaze. The bees get it from the glazed buds of 

 certain trees, from the sticky stalks of sunflowers, and 

 even from the house-painter's varnish can. 



I do not know for how many thousands of years man 

 has studied bees, but up to August, 1768, it was univer- 

 sally believed that beeswax was pollen chewed up into a 

 paste. In that month and year a French peasant, name 

 now lost, reported the exact truth about its manufacture 

 to his local society of bee-keepers. And how do you 

 suppose he made this great discovery? You'd never 

 guess it in the world. He watched them make it, in- 

 stead of trying to reason about it. Bees are telescopic 

 animals, and in where one part slides into another he saw 

 the scales of wax forming. If you feed chickens gener- 

 ously and shut them up in a dark, warm place they fatten 

 quickly. Beeswax is not chemically a fat, but it is so 

 near allied thereto that it is secreted under precisely the 

 same conditions. The bees fill themselves as full of 

 honey as they can hold, cluster in a bunch in the warmth 

 and darkness of the hive, and in about five days the wax 

 is sweated out in little plates. They take them out and 

 chew them up to make them soft and pliable for comb- 



