THE APIARY, 
405 
are quite familiar with the fact that no colonies of 
wild bees will be found in a district where water is 
not readily obtainable, “bee-trees” being almost always 
situated at no great distance from a stream. Honey, 
as drawn from blossoms, is extremely limpid, and 
when first stored will flow from the cells with a 
freeness hardly less than that of water itself. If, in 
the height of the honey season, a comb in course of 
filling be taken from a frame-hive, put on its side, or 
turned upside down, and gently jerked, the newly- 
gathered nectar will at once be displaced; whilst that 
of earlier collection, although unsealed, as it may be, 
will require the extractor to remove it. The latter 
has lost its excess of moisture, and is approaching the 
condition for sealing. That ordinary evaporation has 
much to do with this thickening is all but certain ; 
but that it is the sole cause, as generally stated, is 
extremely doubtful, the bees, in moving their watery 
honey from cell to cell, seeming to possess the power 
of extracting from it some of its water ; and fre- 
quently, when bees are rapidly gathering, they make 
discharges which, by their character, clearly come from 
their Malpighian tubes, the equivalent of the kidneys 
of the higher animals (see page 286, \T 1 . I.). 
While honey is coming in, it provides the requisite 
water for forming the diet of the larvae ; and hence> 
bees then are quite independent of our assistance in 
this direction. But in early spring, when breeding is 
progressing, and the hive contains no honey but old 
store, the poor inmates often suffer the direst distress 
for lack of water. They may at such times be found 
flying in search of it, even when the temperature is so 
