The Life of the Individual 



115 



in the food might have come only from the honey stomach 

 or even from the oesophagus or mouth. 



"6. We have Schonfeld's word for the statement that a 

 regurgitation of the stomach contents may be artificially 

 induced by irritation of the honey stomach and ventriculus 

 in a freshly dissected bee, but all explanations offered to 

 show how this is mechanically possible in spite of the pro- 

 ventricular valve are unsatisfactory when the actual ana- 

 tomical structure is taken into consideration." 



Table III. Composition of Larval Poods. — v. Planta 



Composition of larval food. 



The chemical composition of the larval food has been in- 

 vestigated by von Planta.^ This larval food is obviously 

 not merely a mixture of honey and pollen nor is the food given 

 the various kinds of bees at different ages uniformly the 

 same. The following is a brief summary of von Planta's 

 conclusions : The three kinds of bees require different 

 food and, in the drone and worker larvae, the food changes 

 after the third day, being mixed with half-digested pollen 

 grains and honey in the case of the drone and honey only in 

 the case of the workers.^ On the other hand the queen larva 

 receives the rich food <supphed the young larvae of other 



' von Planta, Adolf, 1888. Ueber den Futtersaft der Bienen. Zeit. f. 

 Phys. Chemie von Hoppe-Seyler, XII, pp. 327-354. 1889; idem, XIII, 

 pp. 552-561. 



' Pollen grains are found plentifully in the mid-intestine of the older 

 worker larvae, so that in this respect at least the results of v. Planta's work 

 must be questioned. 



