A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 169 
stitution differs, not only with each kind of larva, 
but according to the age the larva has reached. 
The bee must therefore have her whole system of 
digestion under full voluntary control. How she 
manages this critical part of her work can only be 
understood by the aid of a good microscope. 
Perhaps there is nothing more wonderful, in the 
whole wonderful anatomy of the bee, than her 
digestive organism and its contributory system of 
glands, each of which has its special and important 
use. When she draws up the nectar from the 
flowers, it passes at once into the first of her two 
stomachs, which is simply and solely a reservoir. 
Here it can remain indefinitely at the will of the 
bee; or it can be thrown up and poured into the 
comb-cells, to be brewed into honey; or it can be 
allowed to pass through a valve at the base of the 
reservoir into the bee’s second and lower stomach, 
where digestion takes place and the honey and 
pollen are formed into chyle. But, by one of the 
most ingenious devices in nature, this second 
stomach is also capable of returning its contents 
to the mouth, and the chyle is there changed into 
bee-milk for the nourishment of the larve. 
The worker-bee has, in all, four distinct glands, 
each secreting a fluid with properties different from 
the other three. These glands are all situated in 
the mouth. Two of them have a common opening 
in the upper side of the root of the tongue; and 
as the bee sucks, their combined secretions mingle 
