102 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



lowing February, these industrious, but unfortunate 

 insects, issuing in a confused manner from the hive, 

 fell dead in thousands, around its entrance, the 

 victims of a poverty created by their efforts to repair 

 the ruins of their habitation.* 



In another experiment, M. Huber confined a 

 swarm so that they had access to nothing beside 

 honey, and five times successively removed the 

 combs with the precaution of preventing the escape 

 of the bees from the apartment. On each occasion 

 they produced new combs, which puts it beyond dis- 

 pute that honey is sufficient to effect the secretion of 

 wax without the aid of pollen. Instead of supplying 

 the bees with honey, they were subsequently fed, 

 exclusively, on pollen and fruit; but though they 

 were kept in captivity for eight days under a bell- 

 glass, with a comb contaming nothing but farina, 

 they neither made wax, nor was any secreted under the 

 rings. In another series of experiments, in which bees 

 were fed with different sorts of sugar, it was found 

 that nearly one-sixth of the sugar was converted into 

 wax, dark coloured sugar yielduig more than double 

 the quantity of refined sugar. 



It may not be out of place to subjoin the few 

 anatomical and physiological facts which have been 

 ascertained by Huber, Madlle, Jurine, and Latreille. 



The first stomach of the worker-bee, according to 

 Latreille,! is appropriated to the reception of honey, 

 but this is never found in the second stomach, which 

 is surrounded with muscular rings, and from one 

 end to the other very much resembles a cask covered 

 with hoops. It is within these rings that the wax is 

 produced, but the secreting vessels for this purpose 

 have hitherto escaped the researches of the acutest 



* American (Quarterly Review for June, 1828, p. 382. 

 t Latreille, Mem. Acad, des Sciences, 1821. 



