80 AUSTRALASIAN 



CHAPTER IV. 



WHAT BEES COLLECT, AND WHAT THEY PEODUCE. 



Bees colled three different sorts of raw materials, all of vege- 

 table origin : (1) the sweet liquids secreted by plants in the 

 nectaries of their blossoms, or exuded on any parts of their 

 leafy structure ; (2) the pollen, or fecundating dust of plants ; 

 (3) resinous matter exuded on various parts of some trees and 

 other plants. They produce, on the other hand, honey, wax, 

 bee-bread, and propolis. This distinction must be borne in 

 mind if we wish to be precise both in our ideas and our mode 

 of expression. We must look upon bees as manufacturers to a 

 certain extent. The nectar, or vegetable sweet, is not properly 

 called honey until it has gone through the honey-sac of the bee, 

 and been stored and ripened in the cells of the honey-comb ; 

 neither does the pollen of flowers become bee-bread until it has 

 been manufactured by the bees, mixed with a little honey and 

 probably some product of their salivary glands ; and even the 

 resinous matter is not used in the hive in its raw state, but is 

 worked by the bees with some mixture of wax before it becomes 

 what we call propolis. The most important product of the bee 

 is, of course, 



HONEY. 



The raw material of the honey is entirely a vegetable pro- 

 duction ; it is excreted or thrown off by the plant, from the 

 superfluity of its saccharine juices, which, when subjected to 

 chemical analysis, are found to consist of nearly the same con- 

 stituents as all sugars, starch, gum, and other non-nitrogenous 

 vegetable secretions, namely, of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, 

 the two latter in the proportions required to form water. This 

 nectar, therefore, does not contain any of the nitrogenous or of 

 the mineral substances furnished by the soil, and which require 

 to be returned to it, in some degree at least, by the use of 



