94 THE BUILDING OF BEES. 
They were also discovered, in Germany, by a farmer. 
This discovery was communicated to the naturalist Bonnet 
by Willelmi, under the date of August 22, 1765: (Huber.) 
In 1779, Thos. Wildman had noticed the scales of wax 
on the abdomen of the workers; and he was so thoroughly 
convinced that wax was secreted from honey, that he rec- 
ommended feeding new swarms, when the weather is stormy, 
that they may sooner build comb for the eggs of the queen. 
From the books written in the French language, it seems 
that it was Duchet, who, in his ‘‘ Culture des Abeilles,’”’ 
printed in Friburg in 1771, wrote first that beeswax is pro- 
duced from honey, of which they eat a large quantity, 
‘which is cooked in their bodies, as in a@ stove,’’ increasing 
thereby the warmth of the hive, and that beeswax ‘‘ exudes 
out of this stove’’ through the rings of their body which are 
near the corselet. This idea of Duchet led Beaunier to ex- 
amine bees, and he discovered that they produce, at one 
time, not two scales of wax only, but nine, the last ring 
having seemed to produce one. He adds: 
208. “To employ this material, bees use their jaws, their 
tongues, and their antennez. In favorable years you can see 
a great quantity of these pieces of wax which have fallen on the 
bottom of the hives.”—(‘‘ Traité sur V Education des Abeilles,” 
Vendéme, 1808.) 
209. When bees are building combs, some scales of wax 
are often found on the bottom board, the bees having been 
unable to use them before they became too tough. Some- 
times they pick them up afterwards and use them; some 
races of bees, the Italian (551), for instance, often use 
also pieces of old combs, which may be within their reach. 
The comb, thus built, is easily detected on account of its 
darker color. Queen-cells seem to be always built of par- 
ticles, taken from the comb on which they hang, and are 
never of pure wax (104). 
