222 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



in the stem. But the first point to be quite clear about is that the 

 nectar, which was part of the plant's wealth-stores of reserve 

 energy, Ixconies the chief part of the bee's wealth. 



Noctar consists for the most part of cane-sugar, and in the bee's 

 honey-sac, a globular part of the food-canal between the gullet 

 and the stomach, this is changed by the ferment of the salivary 

 juice into two simpler sugars, glucose or grape-sugar and fructose. 

 Hut the honey which is passed out again through the bee's mouth 

 into a cell of the honeycomb is much more than sugar. In fact, it is 

 a rather complicated mixture. It contains an unchanged residue of 

 cane-sugar, a little mucilage and more than a little water, some 

 wax and essential oils, a trace of i)igment and salts, besides grains 

 of pollen which contain protein material. So honey is much more 

 than sugar; it is a delicate mixture of foodstuffs; and many people 

 believe that it prolongs youth and staves off ageing. 



The best honey is "virgin honey", made by bees that have not 

 swarmed. It is stored in pure-white cells of translucent wax. Later 

 on in the life of the hive the honey may have to be stored in cells 

 that have Ix'cn used as cradles for grubs, and these have darker 

 and thicker walls. It is delicious honey still, but not quite so fine, 

 and the older comb is not so inviting. The minor differences dis- 

 appear when the honey is removed from the comb by the old- 

 fashioned process of "dripping" or by the modem use of a 

 "centrifugal extractor", which whirls the comb round at a great 

 rate. Experts say that this "extracted" and pooled honey is best 

 of all; but the honey from the honeycomb is more interesting to 

 eat, and one cannot help suspecting that there may be a loss of 

 some subtle by-product when the honey is removed from its natural 

 cups. Honey made from artificial sugar given to the bees should 

 not be ranked with true honey gathered from the flowers. 



From the Natural History point of view, honey has three aspects. 

 In the first place, along with pollen, it is the bee's food. Some of 

 it passes through a complex combination of valve and sieve into 

 the digestive stomach, and it is said that if solid particles such as 

 pollen-grains get through the sieve, they cannot be passed out 

 again when the bee empties its honey into a cell of the comb. In 

 the second place, along with pollen, it is part of the food given to 

 the grubs after they have been reared for a while on more digestible 

 milky material, which seems to be mainly a secretion from the 

 food-canal of the worker. It may be noted here that not a few 

 insects feed their young by forcing out (regurgitating) food from 

 their fcK>d-canal, just as pigeons do in feeding their squabs. In the 

 third place, the honey, with all that in it is, forms a store for the 

 winter — a store that man utilises. It is this storing of honey that 

 accounts for the persistence of the beehive from year to year, in 

 contrast, for instance, to a wasp-community, in which only the 



