0¥ THE HUMBLE-BEE. 71 



they mix it with some jiiice that does not dry readily ; or, to prevent its 

 drying, it is possible they may mix it with the jnice of some other plants 

 which does not dry ; for instance, the inspissated juices of the leek and 

 onion do not dry. 



I took some of the materials that enclosed the maggot, and some of 

 the matter from a humble-bee's leg, and put them on a piece of clean 

 white paper, and burnt them to see if they melted, and all smelt alike : 

 the materials from the humble-bee maggot melted a little, and burnt, 

 and gave a pretty sensible smell ; that from the leg of the humble-bee 

 much the same, only it did not smell so strong ; but their scents were 

 the same in quality although not in quantity. This substance is both 

 their food and their covering. 



To see if there could be extracted anything like wax, or even oil, I 

 boiled a very large hive, and got a very small quantity of a substance 

 that floated on the water ; and when I had dried it, it hardly melted, 

 although it did in a small degree, and burnt pretty clear, by leaving a 

 tolerably large cinder ; but I conceived it had [wax]. 



In one of my places which I made to entice a female to begin her 

 colony, after she had formed her hive and bred several small bees, I took 

 from them the whole comb to see if they would set about a new hive, 

 which they did : but on examining it on the 12th of August, I was 

 astonished to find there were no young females, only the large queen 

 and labourers, nor were there any large cells containing large bees in 

 the chrysalis state. I examined the hive again on the 8th of Septem- 

 ber, when I found only one queen, with several labourers and males. All 

 the chrysalises were come forth, and I observed one cell which I con- 

 ceived had belonged to a young queen. Why she did not breed queens 

 as usual I cannot imagine. The queen was very weak, not able to fly, 

 and died the day after she was taken, which would appear to be much 

 sooner than the queens of former hives died ; but when there are many 

 young queens, it is not so easy to ascertain when the old queen dies ; 

 and probably this circumstance explains it, and she had lived her na- 

 tural life. In June I took away from a hive, where there were a good 

 many bees, the last-formed chrysalis-cells, which either contained males 

 or queens, to see if the future were to be all queens ; but they appeared 

 to have become lazy. 



To ascertain whether any of the labourers or young queens laid eggs, 

 I took the whole hive of bees, and examined their oviducts to see what 

 state they were in, and I found but one queen whose oviducts were full 

 of eggs *, which made mc conclude she was the mother of the whole ; all 



i [Hunt. Prep. No. 2616.] 



