THE HONEY-BEE. 
127 
stance effected the secretion of wax in the body of the 
bee. And further, to ascertain whether the saccharine 
principle were the real source of wax, he supplied the 
captive bees with sugar in the form of syrup ; the result 
was still the same ; wax was produced, and that in a 
shorter period, and in greater abundance than from 
honey. As the reverse of this experiment would prove 
whether the pollen or farina itself had the same pro- 
perty, instead of supplying the bees with honey or 
sugar, he fed them only on fruit and farina. They 
were kept eight days in captivity under a glass bell, 
with a comb having only farina in the cells, yet they 
neither made wax, nor were scales seen under the 
rings. 
It is but justice to the Scotch bee-master, Bonner, 
to remark, that, amidst the errors on the subject which 
prevailed in his day, he had a strong impression of the 
real source of wax, and the manner of its secretion. 
In this, as in other points of bee-scicnce, his natural 
shrewdness and ncutenessof observation led him to the 
very verge of some of the most important of those facts 
in the natural history of bees which we owe to the 
more scientific researches of Huber. " I have some- 
times,” says he, “been inclined to think that wax might 
be an excrescence, exudation, or production from 
tlie bodies of the bees, and that, ns the Queen can lay 
eggs when she pleases, so, if need require, the working 
bees can produce wax from the substunce of their own 
bodies. If this conjecture be right, it will follow, of 
course, that all the food which the bee takes, contri- 
butes to the formation of wax, in the same manner as 
