PROPOLIS. 77 
not a particle of honey in any of them.” During the fore part of the 
day, while the flowers are yet wet with the dew, the bee may be seen 
on the flowers, busily engaged in brushing off the farina, and convey- 
ing it to the baskets or cavities in their thighs, and when a sufficient 
quantity is collected she returns to the hive, when part of her cargo 
is instantly devoured by the nursing-bees, as Dr. Bevan says, to be 
regurgitated for the use of the larva, and another part is stored in 
cells for future exigencies in the following manner: “The bee, while 
seeking a fit cell for her freight, makes a noise with her wings, as if 
to summons her fellow-citizens round her; she then fixes her two 
middle and her two hind legs upon the edge of the cell which she has 
selected, and curving her body seizes the farina with her fore legs, and 
makes it drop into the cell; thus freed from her burden, she is fully 
prepared to collect again. Another bee immediately packs the pollen 
and kneads and works it down into the bottom of the cell, probably 
mixing a little honey with it, judging from the moist state in which 
she leaves it; an air-tight coating of varnish finishes this storing of 
pollen.” 
Bees often store bee-bread in large quantities, far greater than they 
consume, and it proves an injury, inasmuch as it is of no manner of 
use, and it occupies the combs that the queen would otherwise use for 
brood-combs. This is one reason why bees do not prove as prosper- 
ous after occupying the same combs for four or five years, for they 
will yearly store more bee-bread than they consume, and after three 
or four years they will often have one-third of their combs stored with 
it, which renders such combs useless, 
CHAPTER XXXII1. 
PROPOLIS, 
Ts is a substance with which the bees attach the combs to the 
roofs and sides of their dwelling, and cement the crevices and joints 
of their domicil, and strengthen its weak places. It is a resinous sub- 
