116 Insect Architecture. 



procured. Here the discoveries of recent inquirers have 

 been little less singular and unexpected than in other 

 departments of the history of these extraordinary insects. 

 Now that it has been proved that wax is secreted by bees, it 

 is not a little amusing to read the accounts given by our 

 elder naturalists, of its being collected from flowers. Our 

 countryman, Thorley,* appears to have been the first who 

 suspected the true origin of wax, and Wildman (1769) seems 

 also to have been aware of it ; but Keaumur, and particularly 

 Bonnet, though both of them in general shrewd and accurate 

 observers, were partially deceived by appearances. 



The bees, we are erroneously told, search for wax ""upon 

 all sorts of trees and plants, but especially the rocket, the 

 simple poppy, and in general all kinds of flowers. They 

 amass it with their hair, with which their whole body is 

 invested. It is something pleasant to see them roll in the 

 yellow dust which falls from the chives to the bottom of the 

 flowers, and then return covered with the same grains ; but 

 their best method of gathering the wax, especially when it 

 is not very plentiful, is to carry away all the little particles 

 of it with their jaws and fore feet, to press the wax upon 

 them into little pellets, and slide them one at a time, with 

 their middle feet, into a socket or cavity, that opens at their 

 hinder feet, and serves to keep the burthen fixed and steady 

 till they return home. They are sometimes exposed to incon- 

 veniences in this work by the motion of the air, and the 

 delicate texture of the flowers, which bend under their feet 

 and hinder them from packing up their booty, on which 

 occasions they fix themselves in some steady place, where 

 they press the wax into a mass, and wind it round their 

 legs, making frequent returns to the flowers ; and when they 

 have stocked themselves with a sufficient quantity, they 

 immediately repair to their habitation. Two men, in the 

 compass of a whole day, could not amass so much as two 

 little balls of wax ; and yet they are no more than the com- 

 mon burthen of a single bee, and the produce of one journey. 

 Those who are employed in collecting the wax from flowers 

 * Melisselogia, or Female Monarchy, 8vo,, Lond. 1744. 



