192 THE MINUTE ANATOMISTS 



I 



basis of an international system of measurements/ 

 thinks that he could make out how the bees construct 

 their cells if he could spare half a year for quiet 

 observation. 



He has much to say about honey, bee-bread and wax, 

 but his knowledge is still imperfect. The honey, he 

 thinks, undergoes a sort of partial digestion in the 

 crops of the workers, and is afterwards regurgitated 

 into the honey-cells. Bee-bread he examined micro- 

 scopically, but failed to discover that it is derived from 

 the pollen of flowers, though he recognised its identity 

 with the pellets brought home on the legs of working 

 bees. The globules which he found in the bee-bread 

 puzzled him completely ; at one time he thinks that 

 they look like fat -globules ; at another he thinks they 

 may be dew or the effluvium of flowers and fruits, con- 

 densed into globules by the pressure of the atmosphere ! 

 Nor is he more fortunate in explaining the uses of the 

 bee-bread ; he does not find out that it is the same 

 thing as the whitish, almost tasteless paste, which he 

 elsewhere mentions as the food of the larvae ; he has a 

 strong suspicion that it is the raw material out of which 

 wax is formed, and throws out conjectures that saliva, 

 venom or honey may be able to change bee-bread into 

 w^ax. He justly doubts whether the workers ever return 

 to the hive with wax on their legs, and mentions a 

 reward which he ofi'ered in vain to any Dutch beemaster 

 w^lio would bring him a bee so laden. 



The w^hole economy of the hive is discussed, and such 

 matters as the rearing of brood, swarming, and the pro- 

 duction of new queens receive due attention. Most of 



^ The Frenchman, as Reaumur says, was Swammerdam's friend, Thevenot 

 {Hist. des. Insectes, Vol. V, p. 398). Reaumur observes that the pendulum 

 offers a far more exact standard of length. A degree of the earth's surface is 

 proposed as a unit of length in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 



