CHARACTER OF WORKERS. 



Oh ! try no more those tedious fields, 

 Come taste the sweets my garden yields ; 

 The treasures of each blooming mine, 

 The bud, the blossom all are thine. 



' ' And, careless of this noontide heat, 

 I'll follow as thy ramble guides ; 

 To watch thee pause and chafe thy feet, 

 And sweep them o'er thy downy sides ; 

 Then in a flower's bell nestling lie, 

 And all thy envied ardour ply ! 

 And o'er the stem, though fair it grow, 

 With touch rejecting, glance and go. 



"Oh, Nature kind ! Oh, labourer wise ! 

 That roam'st along the summer's ray, 

 Glean' st every bliss thy life supplies, 

 And meet'st prepared thy winter day ! 

 Go, envied, go with crowded gates 

 The hive thy rich return awaits ; 

 Bear home thy store, in triumph gay, 

 And shame each idler of the day." 



150. The immediate objects to which the exterior industry of 

 the bee is directed, are nectar, pollen, and propolis. 



Nectar is a specific juice, found in certain classes of flowers, 

 from which the bee elaborates honey and wax. 



Pollen is a peculiar powder, or dust, spread over the anthers of 

 flowers, which constitutes the principle of fecundation of the 

 flowers themselves, and is the material of which the bee makes 

 bread, which serves as food both for old and young. 



Propolis is a resinous substance, evolved by certain vegetables 

 which the bee uses as cement, mortar, or glue, in its architecture. 

 When the bee pierces the vessels of the flowers, which, containing 

 nectar, are called nectarines, and swallows that precious juice, it 

 is deposited provisionally in the honey-bag already described 

 (26) ; sometimes called, on that account, the first stomach. Here 

 this nectar is converted into honey, the chief part of which is 

 regurgitated, to be stored up for future general consumption in the 

 honey-cells of the combs. 



In the stomach, properly so called (26), and in the intestines, 

 the bread only is found. 



How the wax is secreted, physiologists have not yet discovered 

 with any certainty. It is evident, however, that the immediate 

 seat of its production is within the abdomen, since the parts called 

 wax-pockets, from which it is externally evolved, are rendered 

 visible by pressing the abdomen so as to make it extend itself. A 

 pair of quadrangular whitish pockets, of soft membranaceous 

 texture, will then be seen on each of the four middle ventral, 



77 



