PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 



149 



excursion may be this : — her instinct teaches her that the 

 grains of pollen which enter into the same mass should be 

 homogeneous, in order perhaps for their more effectual co- 

 hesion ; and thus Providence also secures two important ends, 

 — the impregnation of those flowers that require such aid, by 

 the bees passing from one to another ; and the- avoiding the 

 production of hybrid plants, from the application of the pollen 

 of one kind of plant to the stigma of another. When the 

 anthers are not yet burst, the bee opens them with her man- 

 dibles ; takes a parcel of pollen, which one of the first pair of 

 legs receives and delivers to the middle pair, from which it 

 passes to one of the hind legs. 



If the contents of one of the little pellets be examined 

 under a lens, it will be found that the grains have all retained 

 their original shape. A botanist practised in the figure of 

 the pollen of the different species of common plants might 

 easily ascertain, by such an examination, whether a bee had 

 collected its ambrosia from one or more, and also from what 

 species of flowers. 



In the months of April and May, as Reaumur tells us, 

 the bees collect pollen from morning to evening ; but in the 

 warmer months the great gathering of it is from the time of 

 their first leaving the hive (which is sometimes so early as four 

 in the morning) to about 10 o'clock, A. M. About that hour 

 all that enter the hive may be seen with their pellets in their 

 baskets ; but during the rest of the day the number of those 

 so furnished is small in comparison of those that are not. -In 

 a hive, however, in which a swarm is recently established, it 

 is generally brought in at all parts of the day. He supposes, 

 in order for its being formed into pellets, that it requires some 

 moisture, which the heat evaporates after the above hour ; but 

 in the case of recently colonized hives, that the bees go a 

 great way to seek it in moist and shady places. 1 



When a bee has completed her lading, she returns to the 

 hive to dispose of it. The honey is disgorged into the honey- 

 pots or cells destined to receive it, and is discharged from 

 the honey-bag by its alternate contraction and dilatation. A 



1 Reaum. v. 302. — comp. 433. I have seen bees out before it was light. 



L 3 



