9* 



which they lay up a large winter provision. The wax 

 is no more than this meal digested and wrought into 

 a paste. When the flowers are not fully blown, and 

 this meal is not offer d in sufficient quanlities, the 

 bees pinch the point of the stamina in which it is 

 contained with their teeth ; and thus anticipate the 

 progress of vegetation. In April and May the bees 

 are busy from morning to evening, in gathering this 

 meal : but when the weather becomes too hot, they 

 work only in the morning. The bee is furnished with 

 a stomach for its wax, a* well as tor its honey. In 

 the former their powder is altered, digested, and con- 

 cocted into wax, and is then ejected by the same pas* 

 sage by which it was swallowed. Beside the wax thus 

 digested, there is a large portion of the powder knead- 

 ed up for food in every hive, and kept in separate 

 cells for winter provision, this is called by the country 

 people bee-bread ; and contributes to the health and 

 strength of th$ bee during the winter. We may rob 

 them of their honey, and feed them during the win- 

 ter with treacle, but uo proper substitute has yet been 

 found for the bee. bread, without it the animal be- 

 comes consumptive and dies. 



Honey is extracted from that part of the flowers 

 called the nectareum. From the mouth it passes into 

 the first stomach, or honey- bag, which when filled, 

 appears like an oblong bladder. When a b.:e has 

 filled its first stomach, it returns back to the hive 

 where it disgorges the honey into one of the cells. 

 It often happens that the bee delivers its store to 

 some other at the mouth of the hive, and flies off lor 

 a fresh supply. Some honey-combs are left open for 

 common use, many others are stopped up, till tiiere 

 is a necessity of opening them. Each of these are 

 covered carefully with wax, so cLse that the cover 

 seems to be made at the very instant the fluid is 

 deposited within them. 



It was formerly thought that bees do not collect 

 honey in the form we see it, but lodge it in their 

 stomachs, till its nature is changed. But we now 



