§ VII. SECRETION OF WAX.
We have already made some remarks upon wax in the Chapter on "Anatomy and Physiology." The subject is one that even yet has not been thoroughly cleared up, though the discoveries of Hornbostel and Huber have demonstrated that instead of being a vegetable product extracted from pollen it is a fatty secretion of the bees themselves. But later observers have come to the conclusion that though not obtained direct from pollen, that food is essential to their power of secreting it. Cases are certainly recorded in which combs have been built when the bees had for several days been deprived of the means of procuring this food, but it has not been shown that bees which have never had access thereto have still the power of secreting wax; Langstroth on the contrary asserts that some pollen is always found in the stomach of wax-producers. So Dzierzon: "Even if wax, as a fat, is [like honey] a substance destitute of nitrogen, and even if feeding upon honey or sugar is alone sufficient to enable the bees to prepare it, it does not therefore follow that pollen is not necessary for its continued production. For, as already remarked, the bees can prepare food for their young for a considerable time without pollen, yet no one would assert that this is unnecessary for the nourishment of the brood. In the one case as the other the bees are sustained by a certain store taken into themselves, but which by degrees becomes exhausted." To yield one pound of wax they require to consume from thirteen to twenty pounds of honey; so that it would seem as if honey was the food-forming principle of the wax, and pollen the stimulant that imparted to their own organs the capacity for effecting the transformation.
The bees, it need hardly be stated, elaborate this secretion by clustering themselves in festoons and curtains, in which they remain, the fore legs of one clasping the hind ones of another, perfectly still for some twenty-four hours, at the end of which time the scales are found exuding around them, as mentioned in our earlier reference.
The little plates of wax are withdrawn by the bee itself with its hind feet, and carried to the mouth with its fore feet, where the wax is made soft and ductile; vigorous shakes of the body assist in detaching the plates, and the floor-board is afterwards found covered with the pieces that have fallen. One by one some of them then leave the cluster and deposit their burdens in rough masses, which are subsequently wrought by others into the hexagonal form. But it seems feasible that the lower bees pass their secretions up the living ladder to the uppermost ones to undergo this double process. The rapidity with which comb-building progresses at such times would lead to the supposition that there is a division of labour of this kind among them, just as our labourers convey building material to the artisans on the scaffold above. This work of comb-building is carried forward in warm weather, for a cold temperature interferes with the secretion of wax. Von Berlepsch declares that he has known cases in which a hive has built three hundred square inches of comb in a single night!
The secretion of wax, and the method of its adaptation by the bees, are thus admirably described by Evans:—
"So, filtered through yon flutterer's folded mail,
Clings the cooled wax, and hardens to a scale.
Swift, at her well-known call, the ready train
(For not a buzz boon Nature breathes in vain)
Spring to each falling flake, and bear along