8o BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



A question of surpassing interest, but immense 

 difficulty, now presents itself, viz., What is the purpose 

 served by each of these glands? Admitting, for argu- 

 ment's sake, that the view taken in the last chapter, 

 of the office of the stomach-mouth, is correct, we have 

 three or four distinct functions to be performed by 

 such structures as we are now considering. First, a 

 secretion to assist digestion ; second, to change the 

 cane sugar of the nectar of flowers into the grape 

 sugar of honey, and possibly also convert starch into 

 sugar (both of these functions are performed by one 

 salivary secretion in our own case) ; third, to soften 

 and make plastic the wax plates formed on the under 

 side of the abdomen, so that they may be elaborated 

 into comb, and also possibly serve as a vehicle in the 

 moulding of propolis, or the application of it as a 

 varnish ; and, fourth, the production of a brood food. 



Without dogmatising, my investigations into this 

 question lead me somewhat confidently to point to 

 System No. i as actually having the latter office. 

 For it is first worthy of remark, that this gland 

 — the largest and most active — is only found in the 

 worker bees. By referring to Fig. 17, we note that 

 B, the hypo-pharyngeal plate of the hive queen, has 

 scarcely any perforation, and that the merest trace 

 of duct is attached to it, having clearly no secretino- 

 power. It is peculiarly important, as well as 

 interesting, to observe here, in a parenthesis, that, 

 the higher the quality of the queen, the further will 

 she be removed from the worker in this matter 

 poor queens, hurriedly raised, really possessing this 

 gland in an extremely rudimentary form, while those 



