BEE MANUAL. 89 
of secreting the wax and building the comb? This appears to 
be Professor Cook’s view ; he says, 
“That nitrogenous food is necessary, as claimed by Langstroth and 
Neighbours, is not true. Yet, in the active season, when muscular 
exertion is great, nitrogenous food must be imperatively necessary to 
supply the waste and give tone to the body. Secretion of wax 
demands a healthy condition of the bee, and so indirectly requires 
some nitrogenous food.” 
At all events, it is now well known that the wax is exuded 
from the body of the worker bee, and formed in thin flakes in 
what are termed the wax pockets, of which four may be 
observed in the foregoing engraving, on each side of the centre 
line on the under part of the abdomen, and which are, in fact, 
the folds of the shell-like plates covering the abdominal rings. 
The wax can only be secreted when the temperature of the 
hive is above a certain point, and during the time of secretion 
the bees appear to hang in clusters or festoons, in a state of 
absolute repose. In the height of the honey season, or so long 
as new comb is required, this secretion goes on night and day. 
The constituents of wax, according to the analysis of Hess, 
are— 
Oxygen ... e nae .. 7.50 
Carbon... me oe ... 79.30 
Hydrogen wd ae eelds20) 
10000 
Langstroth says that ‘careful experiments prove that from 
thirteen to twenty pounds of honey are required to make a 
single pound of wax.” ‘This has been until lately accepted as 
a well-ascertained fact ; but within the last few years some 
American apiarists have begun to doubt if quite so much honey 
was consumed, and lately it has been stated, on the strength of 
‘some isolated experiments, that the bees do not consume more 
than eight pounds of honey in order to secrete one pound of 
wax. Many more careful experiments will be requisite before 
this can be satisfactorily proved or disproved. In the meantime 
it may be asserted that something between ecght and twenty 
pounds are required, and we cannot be far astray if we assume 
the mean of these figures, or fourteen pounds, to be correct for 
any purposes of calculation. 
