THE HONEY-GUIDES 77 



In a recent survey of our knowledge of the chemical aspects of wax, 

 Warth (1947, p. 49) gives the chemical composition of yellow beeswax 

 (of domestic bees) in percentage as follows: 



Alkyl esters of fat and waxy acids 72.0 



Free waxy acids 13-13.5 



Hydrocarbons 12-12. 5 



Cholesteryl esters of fatty acids (cholesterol palmitoleate) . 0. 8 



Lactones (myristo-lactone) 0. 6 



Moisture 1-2. 



These figures, it should be remembered, relate to domestic honey- 

 comb. Warth and Hanzley (in Warth, ibid., p. 55) have shown that 

 the composition of the cellular structure of wild bee brood comb differs 

 from that of the ordinary honeycomb made in beehives by bees for 

 storing their excess honey. Analysis of a cleaned brood comb obtained 

 from a wild bees' nest in a hollow tree at Millvale, Pennsylvania, 

 showed that the yield of wax materials, namely beeswax and propolis, 

 was 39 percent, in contrast to over 95 percent from the beehive honey- 

 comb. "After freeing the living quarters of honey, brood, pollen, and 

 other waste materials including leafy matter, the cleaned cells of the 

 comb structure yielded, after wax and propolic extraction, horny shells 

 of sclero-albumenoid, and no cellulose. The nature of the pure wax 

 separated from both types of combs was substantially the same, but 

 the wax extracted by solvent (chloroform) from the brood-comb shows 

 considerably more vegetable wax constitutents, which have not been 

 wholly converted to the end stage." 



There is a difference in composition between the wax of the honey- 

 comb proper and the propolis, the wax used by the bees for sealing the 

 cells. Warth gives a succinct comparison of both the comb wax 

 (extraction wax) and the propolis of domestic honeycomb and a wild 

 bees' comb, in percentage, as follows: 



Wild bee Domestic 



Extraction wax: honeycomb honeycomb 



Propolis 10. 10. 



Vegetable wax 25.0 8.0 



Beeswax 65. 82. 



Propolis: 



Propolis resin 92.7 91.5 



Propolis balsam 7. 3 8. 5 



Direct observations in the field of a number of adult honey-guides 

 feeding shows that they eat both the propolis and the honeycomb 

 proper, and more of the latter than of the former. Certainly the ab- 

 sence of propolis in no observable way decreases the avidity with 

 which they eat comb. The fact that they eat foundation wax and 

 candles is further evidence that it is the wax and not any associated 

 resins that they want. That digestion of the wax, or at least of part 



