THE HONEY-BEE. 127 



stance effected the secretion of wax in the body of the 

 bee. And further, to ascertain whether the saccharine 

 principle were the real source of wax, he supplied the 

 captive bees with sugar in the form of syrup ; the result 

 was still the same ; wax was produced, and that in a 

 shorter period, and in greater abundance than from 

 honey. As the reverse of this experiment would prove 

 whether the pollen or farina itself had the same pro- 

 perty, instead of supplying the bees with honey or 

 sugar, he fed them only on fruit and farina. They 

 were kept eight days in captivity under a glass bell, 

 with a comb having only farina in the cells, yet they 

 neither made wax, nor were scales seen under the 

 rings. 



It is but justice to the Scotch bee-master, Bonner, 

 to remark, that, amidst the errors on the subject which 

 prevailed in his day, he had a strong impression of the 

 real source of wax, and the manner of its secretion. 

 In this, as in other points of bee-science, his natural 

 shrewdness and acuteness of observation led him to the 

 very verge of some of the most important of those facts 

 in the natural history of bees which we owe to the 

 more scientific researches of Huber. " I have some- 

 times/' says he," been inclined to think that wax might 

 be an excrescence, exudation, or production from 

 the bodies of the bees, and that, as the Queen can lay 

 eggs when she pleases, so, if need require, the working 

 bees can produce wax from the substance of their own 

 bodies. If this conjecture be right, it will follow, of 

 course, that all the food which the bee takes, contri- 

 butes to the formation of wax, in the same manner as 



