88 AUSTRALASIAN 
wax when permanently deprived of bee-bread. . . . . Some ee 
is always found in the stomach of wax-producing workers, and they 
never build comb so rapidly as when they have free access to that 
article. It must therefore either furnish some of the elements of wax, 
or in seme way assist the bee in producing it. Further investigations 
are necessary, before we can arrive at perfectly accurate results. 
He further points out the fact that, while honey and sugar 
contain by weight about eight pounds of oxygen to one of 
carbon and hydrogen, the wax contains only one pound of the 
first to more than sixteen of the two latter; and that, as the 
combustion of oxygen is the great source of animal heat, the 
great quantity consumed in the conversion of honey into wax 
Fig. 27,-UNDER SIDE OF ABDOMEN OF WORKER BEE, SHOWING 
WAX POCKETS AND WAX SCALES, 
“must aid in generating the extraordinary heat which enables 
the bees to mould the softened wax into such exquisitely deli- 
cate and beautiful forms.” The force of this observation will 
be seen when we recollect that wax requires a temperature of 
about 145° to melt it, though it may be moulded, by pressure, 
at 100° or less. Is it not probable that the way in which 
‘“bee-kread assists the bee in producing the wax,” as Langstroth 
expresses it, is that its nitrogenous qualities serve to keep up 
the bodily strength of the insect during the exhansting work 
