86 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



reference will be made,) there have been, beyond question, as 

 many as forty-five to fifty thousand. When in such num- 

 bers, and carefully attended to, in the matters of roo7n and 

 ventilation, the united labors of so numerous a body of work- 

 men, or rather work-bees, are productive of magnificent moun- 

 tains of high-piled sweets. The writer once owned a non- 

 swarming hive, which he kept in a garden in Salem, and which 

 consisted of three collateral boxes. At the end of the second 

 season from its being tenanted by the bees, each side box con- 

 tained about forty-five pounds of honey. Both these were 

 taken away, and there was left in the central box, where the 

 bees domiciled, fifty pounds for their winter use. To return to 

 the workers. They are all provided with a flexible apparatus, 

 called a proboscis, with which they lap tip the honey, for they 

 are a lapping, not a sucking insect — Shakspeare to the contrary, 

 notwithstanding, who says in the Tempest, — 



" Where the bee sucks, there lurk I." 



They also have, upon their thighs, small, hollow baskets to 

 receive the farina and propolis which they gather, in great, and 

 seemingly unnecessary quantities, from the flowers and the 

 leaves. 



The working bees have, further, a honey bag, in shape like 

 a tapering oil flask. This, when full, is about the size of a 

 small pea. The honey which it contains, is in part, delivered 

 up into the honey cells of the hive, for winter use, in part, goes 

 into the general system of the bee for its nourishment, and a 

 portion is converted into wax, which is afterwards exuded in 

 scales, between the rings of the abdomen. For their personal 

 defence, and the defence of their home and hive, and its right 

 precious contents of queen, and young, and honey, they are fur- 

 nished with a most powerful sting, in the use and application 

 of which they are eminently apt, as your committee have had 

 pungent experience, and can testify thereto. This sting is 

 complex and two-fold, being a horny scabbard, enclosing two 

 bearded darts, along the groove between which, is ejected a 

 venomous fluid acutely poisonous. This poison is a chemical 

 acid, which may be neutralized and rendered harmless, by the 



