HONEY. 47 



CHAPTEE VIII. 



HONEY. 



This substance or sweet juice is found in the flowers of 

 certain plants in almost every country. Doubtless it is 

 odoriferous, and hence bees, whose scent or smelling 

 powers are wonderfully keen, can easily find it. They 

 are furnished with proboscises of some length, wherewith 

 they can reach most of the nectaries of flowers in which 

 honey is found. It has been said that at the point of 

 each proboscis there is a little brush of exquisite softness, 

 which is used for coUeoting the honey, and thus enabling 

 the bee to fill its own bag. But we cannot speak of this 

 brush, or of the manner of collecting honey, without getting 

 into cloudland and difiiculties. These subjects are left for 

 those who have studied the anatomy of the honey-bee. 



The honey as it is collected in the flower and carried to • 

 the hive is not honey proper. It is a thin sweet juice, 

 deposited in the fiist open cells found in the hive by the 

 bees. During the day they carry as much home as pos- 

 sible, and during the night they re-swallow it, when it 

 undergoes a thickening process, and thus becomes honey 

 proper. Before it is swallowed a second time, it readily 

 runs out of the cells whenever the hive is turned up or 

 a little to on side. But after having been put twice 

 through the stills of bees it is not easily disturbed. Be- 



