The Life of the Individual 
115 
in the food might have come only from the honey stomach 
or even from the oesophagus or mouth. 
“6. We have Schonfcld’s word for the statement that a 
regurgitation of the stomach contents may be artificially 
induced by irritation of the honey stomach and ventriculus 
in a freshly dissected bee, but all explanations offered to 
show how this is mechanically possible in spite of the pro- 
ventricular valve are unsatisfactory when the actual ana¬ 
tomical structure is taken into consideration.” 
Table III. Composition of Larval Poods. — v. Planta 
Queen 
Drones 
Workers 
U nder 4 
Days 
Over 4 
Days 
Under 4 
Days 
Over 4 
Days 
Proteid . . . 
45.15 
55.91 
31.67 
53.38 
27.87 
Fat .... 
13.55 
11.90 
4.74 
8.38 
3.69 
Sugar .... 
20.39 
9.57 
38.49 
18.09 
44.93 
Composition of larval food. 
The chemical composition of the larval food has been in¬ 
vestigated by von Planta. 1 This larval food is obviously 
not merely a mixture of honey and pollen nor is the food given 
the various kinds of bees at different ages uniformly the 
same. The following is a brief summary of von Planta’s 
conclusions: The three kinds of bees require different 
food and, in the drone and worker larvae, the food changes 
after the third day, being mixed with half-digested pollen 
grains and honey in the case of the drone and honey only in 
the case of the workers. 2 On the other hand the queen larva 
receives the rich food supplied the young larvae of other 
1 von Planta, Adolf, 1888. Ucber den Futtersaft der Bienen. Zeit. f. 
Phys. Chemic von Hoppe-Seyler, XII, pp. 327 354. 1889; idem , XIII, 
pp. 552-561. 
2 Pollen grains are found plentifully in the mid-intestine of the older 
worker larval, so that in this respect at least the results of v. Planta s work 
must be questioned. 
