276 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



bees use it to close all the crevices of their habitation ; thej' 

 also cover the bodies of interlopers with it, such as large in- 

 sects, snails, etc., which enter the hive, and whose bodies 

 are too heavy for them to carry out ; and with this substance, 

 also, they glue their combs to the side walls of the hive. 



The distinguished apiarian, Huish, speaking of the pro- 

 polis, says, " It is a resin, soluble in spirit of wine and oil of 

 turpentine. Independently of the use to which it is applied 

 in medicine as a digestive, it has been discovered by ex- 

 periment that, dissolved in the above solvents, it forms an 

 excellent substitute for the varnish which is used in giving 

 the color of gold to silver, or to tin made into foil. If, for 

 example, it be incorporated with mastic or sandarac it 

 would be excellent in the gilding of leather, etc." 



The pollen of flowers, called also farina or ambrosia, and 

 erithace and cerinthe by Pliny, is, as may be daily demon- 

 strated, the real food of the bees, and therefore deserves the 

 name which has been given to it, of bee-bread. This dust, 

 which is found on the top of the stamens of all flowers, and 

 which the bees collect and transport in their fossas to their 

 hives, is their real food and nourishment, and also the real 

 material from which they manufacture both the propolis 

 and the wax. 



But how these little creatures transform the pollen into 

 wax is a very different matter, and a question which has 

 puzzled the most learned naturalists from the time of Aris- 

 totle, 300 B.C., to the present century. It is true that there 

 are trees and shrubs which furnish a wax-like substance ; 

 for instance, the wax-tree, or bayberry {Myrica cerifera), 

 found in all our Northern and Southern States, from the 

 berries of which we obtain, by boiling them, a green waxy 

 substance, which is used for making candles, and of Avhich 

 berries one pound will make two ounces of wax ; but from 

 the pollen of flowers no one has ever been able to make any 

 kind of wax. If bees, returning from their excursions to 



