86 QUEEN-REARING IN ENGLAND. 



and middle legs. This greater wetness of the pollen on the , 

 hind legs may very well be accounted for partly, as Casteel 

 points out, by the squeezing of the pollen between the auricle < 

 and the tibia, and partly by the fact that, by the frequent . 

 rubbing of the pollen-laden hind legs together with the addi- 

 tion of little or no dry pollen, the moisture is brought to the 

 surface, just as when one works up a ball of dough it becomes 

 sticky and clings to the board and rolling-pin if one does not 

 keep adding flour. 



It is well known that the honey-bee collects propolis in 

 its corbiculffi. Thinking it would be impossible for it to 

 pass such a sticky substance through the leg into the corbicula 

 as it does pollen, I exposed a propolised quilt in my apiary 

 to the warm sunshine on a sunny day in March, 1912, and 

 watched to see what would happen. A bee soon alighted, 

 and after making several futile attempts, succeeded in 

 detaching with its mandibles a little bit of propolis. Seizing 

 the fragment in its fore legs, it dashed it into the left corbi- , 

 cula with the left middle leg, and immediately afterwards 

 patted it with the metatarsus of this leg. Further fragments 

 were detached with the mandibles and the bee succeeded in 

 dashing many of them into its corbiculae in the same manner 

 as before, some of them being con^-eyed by the left middle 

 leg to the left corbicula, and others by the right middle leg 

 to the right corbicula. 



Thus the honev-bee loads its corbicula with propolis in 

 an entire! V different wav to that in which it loads it with ; 

 pollen. 



L. Upcott Gill & Son, Ltd., Drury Lane, London, W C 



