APIS MELLIFICA. 



therefore always advisable to have large beds of borage, 

 mignonette, lemon thyme, and sage in the neighborhood of 

 beehives. Those flowers which yield a nectar innocuous to 

 the bees themselves, but possessing poisonous qualities when 

 taken by man, are sometimes frequented by the bees, and the 

 honey derived from them acts like a poison. The description 

 by Xenophon of the intoxicating or maddening honey, which 

 so violently affected a number of the ten thousand Greek sol- 

 diers in his celebrated retreat, has been confirmed by the ob- 

 servations of Tournefort ; and Dr. Barton, in his account of 

 the poisonous honey collected from the Kalmia latifolia by 

 the bees in Pennsylvania, justly observes that there is more 

 of poetry than philosophy in the following lines of Pope: 



" In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true 

 From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew." 



The honey which is swallowed by the bees passes into the 

 crop, where it is accumulated as in a reservoir, and upon the 

 return of the bee to the hive is regurgitated into a honey-cell. 

 If any honey had been previously accumulated there, the bee 

 breaks through the firm, cream-like crust which always forms 

 upon the exposed surface of the honey, and it is this crust 

 which maintains the honey in the horizontal cells. 



The collection of the farina or pollen of flowers is a great 

 object of the industry of bees. In large flowers, as the tulip, 

 the bee dives in, and, if the pollen receptacle or anther be 

 not burst, she bites it open and comes out singularly disguised, 

 being covered over entirely with the fertilizing dust, which 

 adheres readily to the fringed hairs of her body and legs. 



Aristotle, who was well acquainted with much that is in- 

 teresting in the economy of the bee, was the first to observe 

 that a bee during each single excursion from the hive limits 

 her visits to one species of flower. Modern naturalists have 

 confirmed the general accuracy of this statement, and have 

 noticed that the pollen with which a bee comes home laden is 

 always of the same color. The necessity of this instinct 

 arises out of the operation which the pollen first undergoes 

 when collected by the bee. She rakes it out with incredible 

 quickness by means of the first pair of legs, then passes it to 

 the middle pair, which transfer it to the hind legs, by which it 

 is wrought into little pellets. Now if the pollen were taken 

 indiscriminately from different flowers, it is probable that the 

 grains, being heterogeneous, would not cohere so effectually. 



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