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PROPOLIS, OR HIVE CEMENT AND 

 VARNISH. 



The fact that bees are excellent architects and builders 

 has been known from very early times. The greater part 

 of their building is composed of wax, but as houses require 

 besides bricks and stones cement or mortar, so bees also 

 have their cement, which they use to fasten securely the 

 new and delicate combs to the top of the hive ; not only 

 so, they make their dwelling both wind and water tight, 

 by cementing up most securely even the smallest crevice 

 or opening, though not larger than a pin's head. As our 

 polishers and painters to complete their work varnish it 

 over, so the bees, when the cells are complete — if not 

 immediately tenanted and filled either with honey, oee- 

 bread, or the young bees — coat them over with a thin film 

 of varnish. About the end of March or commencement 

 of April, a little before sundown, the atmosphere is some- 

 times filled with a balsamic perfume, a pleasant hum is 

 distinctly audible, unheard in the busy part of the day ; the 

 perfume arises from the balsam poplar, whose leaf-buds 

 are now, under the genial influence of spring, rapidly 

 expanding ; the gum or gluey substance, which coated 

 the buds like hard varnish, and rendered them impervious 

 to wintry rains, frost, and snow, is being eagerly gathered 

 by the bees j hence the humming sound. 



Why do they collect this sticky stuff ? was a question 

 once placed before the writer. The answer cannot be 

 better given than by quoting the experience of the learned 

 though blind Huber. One spring, to observe their mode 

 of gathering the gum, he planted in pots near his apiary 

 a quantity of the branches of the balsam poplar, before 

 the buds were expanded. " The bees alighted on them, 



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