of 
394 
eee eee 
| years. 
a sufficient number of cells have not been pre- 
pared: in this case, she places several eggs in 
one, and leaves to the working bees the task of 
subsequently arranging them. The eggs laid at 
the commencement of fine weather all belong to 
the working sort, and hatch at the end of 4 days. 
The larves are regularly fed by the workers for 6 
or 7 days, when they are enclosed in their cell, 
spin a cocoon, and become nymphs, and in about 
12 days acquire their perfect state. The cells are 
then immediately fitted up for the reception of 
new eggs. The eggs for producing males are laid 
| two months later, and those for the females im- 
mediately afterwards. This succession of gener- 
ations forms so many particular communities, 
which, when increased beyond a certain degree, 
leave the parent hive to found a new colony else- 
where. ‘Three or four swarms sometimes leave a 
hive in a season. A good swarm is said to weigh 
at least 6 or 8 pounds. ‘The life of the bee, like 
that of all the other insects of its class, does not 
continue long after the great business of provid- 
ing for the continuance of the species is completed. 
The honey-bee is frequent in the wild state in 
warmer climates, but is very rarely to be found 
in Britain; nevertheless it is said to exist, and 
that a hive was discovered within these some 
Thus the animal may have either been 
domesticated at a very remote period by the in- 
_ habitants, or it may have been brought from 
abroad. Naturalists doubt whether the wild 
honey-bee is a native of America, though exist- 
ing in numbers in the woods. It is rather sup- 
posed to have been carried thither in the sixteenth 
or seventeenth century. Honey is said to be a 
great article of subsistence in Madagascar, and 
in other places where bees are common in the 
clefts of trees. In Africa there is a small bird 
called cuculus indicator, or the honey-bird, which, 
uttering a peculiar note, and flitting from bough 
to bough, will infallibly lead the traveller to a 
swarm in some hollow of a tree.—See Swammer- 
dam Biblia Nature.—Maraldi sur les Abeilles, 
Mem. de V Academie des Sciences, 1712.—Reaumur, 
Memotres pour servir aU Histoire des Insectes, tom. 
v.—Schirach, Histoire Naturelle de la Reine des 
Abeilles.—Bergman, De Apibus et Mellificti vicis- 
situdinibus ex Alveorum ponderatione cestimandis. 
—Ray, Memoire sur 0 Histoire des Abeilles, Journal 
de Physique, tom. xxiv.— Bonnet, Giuvres, tom. v.— 
Della Rocca, Traité complet sur les Abeilles—But- 
ler’s Feminine Monarchy— Hartlib’s Commonwealth 
of Bees—Thorley’s Inquiry into the Nature, Order, 
and Government of Bees—Wildman on the Man- 
agement of Bees.—Bromurich’s Haperienced Bee-keep- 
_ er.—Bonner’s New plan for speedily increasing the 
| number of Bee-Hives in Scotland—Huber’s New 
Observations on the Natural History of Bees.—Cot- 
| ton’s Bee Book. 
The indistinct descriptions which some tra- 
| vellers give of the bees of different foreign coun- 
tries, render it difficult for us to determine 
whether the real honey-bee is meant or not. It 
BEE. 
is true, they describe such bees as being the 
same; but they maintain, that one species wants 
a sting, and that another nestles in the earth 
with its honey. So far as naturalists have yet 
ascertained, neither of these peculiarities belong 
to the honey-bee; but it is extremely probable, 
that besides the single species which we keep in 
hives, others might be domesticated. One kind 
is found in Surinam, which hives in very numer- 
ous societies. These construct a nest eight or 
ten inches in diameter, and eighteen or twenty 
long, towards the top of trees of moderate height. 
Within are found large cells of a fine reddish 
liquid honey, in great abundance. The nests, 
which resemble a lump of earth applied against 
the tree, cannot be procured unless the tree be 
cut down, when the natives of the country, after 
using the honey, and making a kind of mead, roll 
the wax around matches. 
Honey.—All the operative parts of the economy of 
the hive are intrusted to the workers; and as the 
collection of honey and combs which they construct 
are the substances converted to our use, and indeed 
is the main purpose of our cultivating them in num- 
bers, it is proper that we should elucidate the man.. 
ner in which this is effected. Honey is a vegetable 
secretion, which appears at different seasons of the 
year, especially when flowers in general blow. We 
can readily understand how it is stored up by the 
bees: they lick it with the proboscis from the flow- 
ers; it is swallowed; and on their return to the hive 
it is disgorged, not from the trunk, but the mouth, 
into the cells. Only a small portion is coilected by 
each, but the united labours of thousands produce an 
abundant harvest. Reaumur has calculated, that 
within an hour 3,000 bees have returned from thei 
collections to a hive, whose population did not exceed 
18,000; and in six days, Swammerdam, if we rightly 
understand his expressions, found nearly 4,000 cells 
constructed by a new swarm, consisting of less than 
6,000 bees. Some of the cells filled with honey are 
destined for the daily consumption of the bees, and 
others are sealed up and reserved for times of neces- 
sity. Many of the labourers free themselves of their 
collections before reaching the cells, by bestowing 
them on their neighbours; the trunks of the latter 
are seen extended, and they receive the honey with 
them as it is disgorged. Honey being a vegetable 
product, its properties depend entirely on the nature 
of the plants from which it is collected: one kind 1s 
of the finest flavour, delicious to the taste, pure and 
transparent; another is entirely of a different consist- 
ence, dark, greenish, tenacious or bitter; anda third 
kind has been known to produce deleterious effects, 
which were almost, if not completely, fatal to hu- 
man life. Dioscorides, Pliny, and various ancient 
authors, speak of honey in the east being dangerous 
in certain years; and Xenophon relates, that when 
the army of ten thousand approached Trebisond, the 
soldiers having partaken copiously of honey found in 
the neighbourhood, were affected like persons ine- 
briated; several, on whom it had more violent con- 
sequences, became furious, and seemed as if in the 
agonies of death. Though none of them died, all 
were extremely weak for three days. In recent 
times, we are told of the pernicious effects of a par- 
ticular kind of honey collectedin America; and plants 
grow in the Archipelago, the honey of which is said 
to occasion vomiting. Thus Don Felix Azara in- 
forms us, that there is a particular kind of honey col- 
lected in Paraguay, called cabatatu, which occasions 
a severe headach, and produces as perfect intoxication 
as ensues from brandy ; while another kind brings on 
