Chap. 12.] QUALITIES OF HONEY. 11 



numerous is sure to be the progeny of the swarm. When the 

 honey is beginning to come to maturity, the bees drive away 

 the drones, and setting upon each in great numbers, put them 

 all to death. It is only^in the spring that the drones are 

 ever to be seen. If you deprive a drone of its wings, and then 

 replace it in the hive, it will pull off the wings of the other 

 drones. 



CHAP. 12. THE QUALITIES OF HONEY. 



In the lower part of the hive they construct for their future 

 sovereign a palatial abode, 29 spacious and grand, separated from 

 the rest, and surmounted by a sort of dome : if this promi- 

 nence should happen to be flattened, all hopes of progeny are 

 lost. All the cells are hexagonal, each foot 30 having formed 

 its own side. No part of this work, however, is done at any 

 stated time, as the bees seize every opportunity for the perform- 

 ance of their task when the days are fine ; in one or two 

 days, at most, they fill their cells with honey. 



(12.) This substance is engendered from the air, 31 mostly at 

 the rising of the constellations, and more especially when 

 Sirius is shining ; never, however, before the rising of the 

 Vergiliae, and then just before day-break. Hence it is, that at 

 early dawn the leaves of the trees are found covered with a 

 kind of honey-like dew, and those who go into the open air at 

 an early hour in the morning, find their clothes covered, and 

 their hair matted, with a sort of unctuous liquid. Whether 

 it is that this liquid is the sweat of the heavens, or whether 

 a saliva emanating from the stars, or a juice exuding from the 

 air while purifying itself, would that it had been, when it 

 comes to us, pure, limpid, and genuine, as it was, when first 

 it took its downward descent. But as it is, falling from so 

 vast a height, attracting corruption in its passage, and tainted 

 by the exhalations of the earth as it meets them, sucked, too, 

 as it is from off the trees and the herbage of the fields, and 

 accumulated in the stomachs of the bees — for they cast it up 



29 Cuvier says that the cell for the future queen is different from the 

 others, and much larger. - The bees also supply the queen larva much more 

 abundantly with food, and of more delicate quality. 



50 Cuvier says that this coincidence with the number of the legs is quite 

 accidental, as it is with the mouth that the animal constructs the cell. 



51 The basis of it is really derived from the calix or corolla of flowers. 



