56 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



February 



About the Bee's Honey 



By Dr. Brunnich 



THE reader who, with his bread, 

 is eating honey, scarcely imagines 

 how much is required before the 

 sweet ambrosia comes into his dish. 

 That in the future he may have a 

 double enjoyment in eating honey, I 

 wish to tell something about the 

 manner of its origin. 



Every man knows, with the excep- 

 tion of some barbarians, like that 

 peasant near Zoug, who bitterly ac- 

 cused my bees of devouring the blos- 

 soms of his cherry trees, I say, every 

 man knows that the flowers secrete 

 nectar, as a compensation to the in- 

 sects for their services as love-mes- 

 sengers in carrying the pollen from 

 one plant to another. By far the 

 most important of those "postilions 

 d'amour" are the bees, because they 

 appear early in spring and in great 

 numbers. 



The heart of the bee beats in the 

 abdomen and nearby the Creator has 

 given to the little insect a most com- 

 fortable valise, the honey-sac. This 

 is formed of a very thin elastic mem- 

 brane, around which 2 layers of mus- 

 cles are acting; by the contraction of 

 the latter the honey-sac shrivels to a 

 tiny knob, while the membrane is 

 folded to thousands of little plies. 

 When quite filled, the little bladder 

 may contain about one decigram of 

 water, that is about as much as the 

 whole bee weighs. A wonderful valve 

 leads into the stomach and at discre- 

 tion the bee can shut the honey-sac 

 or it can let run some microscopic 

 drops into the stomach, if it needs 

 new strength. When the bee is flying 

 out for honey it takes drop after 

 drop of the nectar, till the honey-sac 

 feels full enough to go home. _ 

 The nectar of the flowers is very- 



CD: 



thin and often contains • but about 

 20 per cent of cane sugar and 80 per 

 cent of water. Why bring so much 

 useless water into the hive? At least 

 half of the water passes through the 

 fine membrane of the honey-sac into 

 the surrounding blood, while the bee 

 is flying home. By this water the 

 whole blood is diluted, but in the rec- 

 tum there are 6 glands which with- 

 draw the superfluous water, and be- 

 fore the bee enters its flight-hole it 

 spatters out the water with a minute 

 flash. And now it hurries into the 

 streets of its waxen palace to seek an 

 empty cell; but it has no time for 

 long seeking. It does not care to se- 



Figure 1. Drawing showing a magnified section of the rectum and of the 6 glands. 



Rectal glands of the honeybee. Dr. Bdunnich (original.) 

 a. Transversal section of the rectum. 

 6. Longitudinal section of one of the six glands. 

 c. Transversal section of one of the glands. 

 ri. External layer of a gland. 

 r-2. Internal layer of a gland. 



between the two systems of the gland. 

 ! nelial membrane of the rectum, 

 lis of the gland, 

 ii. Nuclei of the gland cells 

 in ;. in-.'. Annular and longitudinal muscles. 

 m. T'eritrophic membrane. 



The rectal glands consist of two series of culls, r-t and >•-'. which probably hav<- each 



Bo • I it-shaped long room, sp. I suppose that the glands 



,i double nitration of the blood scrum. The latter penetrates across the cells, :i. 



into the mentioned space, and from there across the larger cells, z-i, into the free room 



of the rectum. The second system of the glands resembles much the wax-glands. 



quester a cell in which the queen is 

 about to deposit an egg. So the 

 fresh honey is placed irregularly in 

 the hive, in front and behind, above 

 and below. The honey thus is spread 

 over a great surface for evaporating. 

 But by evaporating there is done 

 only a small part of the thickening of 

 the honey, from 30 to 40 per cent to 

 about 18 per cent of water. The bees 

 manage this themselves more effi- 

 caciously by carrying about the 

 honey. Especially in the night, the 

 young bees suck up the fresh honey, 

 and after having withdrawn a new 

 quantity of water within their honey- 

 sac they pour the liquid in other cells. 

 By so doing the honey is rendered 

 thick in an effective manner and 

 room is made for new coming honey. 

 For the high season the question of 

 room is a very important one in the 

 beehive, for here come 20-to-40-days- 

 old bees with nectar, or 15-to-20-days- 

 old sisters, with both nectar and 

 thick pollen pellets, all clamoring for 

 empty cells for their burdens, wliile 

 the poor queen hurries around 

 searching for empty cells for the 

 eggs which she must deposit or lose 

 at random. Think of it ! In the 

 brood-chamber of a good hive there 

 are 100,000 cells, more or less, 75,000 

 of which may be occupied with brood 

 in all stages, and the queen demands 

 2.500 to 3.500 cells for her eggs daily; 

 the lues need 15,000 to 30,000 cells for 

 fresh honey and at least 2,000 for 

 pollen. The most active change goes 

 on daily, in the brood-nest; here the 

 . ells, which young bees have just left 

 are filled with eggs again, or with 

 pollen, or honey, and the ones must 

 constantly make room for others. 

 Often then, the room becomes short, 

 and if the careful beetnan does not 

 procure space by giving new combs, 

 or by extracting the filled ones, or by 

 adding supers, there enters a condi- 

 tion ol alarming lack of room, which 

 hinders all the work and demands a 

 shortening of the room allotted to 

 both queen and workers. This either 



