The bees blend this substance with wax in different proportions, as occasion may require. Among the ancients, it bore different names, according to the quantity of wax it contained. Virgil made this distinction, though Mr. Martin conceives that his narcissi lachrymæ, cera [cum quâ]—“spiramenta tenuia linunt,”—and gluten, all mean the same thing: this is probably a mistake. It seems much more likely that Virgil should mean metys, pissoceron and propolis, the three names by which Pliny says that the varieties of propolis were distinguished in his time.
I have before alluded to the fortification of the weak places of hives with propolis. M. Reaumur, whose hives consisted of wooden frames and panes of glass, wishing to put this talent of the bees to the test, carelessly fastened the glass of a hive with paper and paste, before putting in a swarm; the bees soon discovered the weakness of his paste-work, and indignantly gnawing to pieces this feeble fence, secured the glass with their own cement.
I have already observed, that the sage bee chooses the morning for collecting pollen, on account of the dew’s enabling her to compress it better; but, as moisture would render propolis less coherent, she gathers this substance when the day is somewhat advanced, and when the warmth of the sun has imparted to it softness and pliancy. These qualities are however soon lost, after it has been detached from the secreting surfaces, and exposed to the oxygenizing power of the air. So rapid is this hardening process, that the bees which store it, oftentimes find some difficulty in tearing it with their jaws from the thighs of its collectors.
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
IMPORTANCE OF BEES TO THE FRUCTIFICATION OF FLOWERS.
Honey is regarded by modern naturalists as of no other use to plants but to allure insects, which, by visiting the nectaries of their flowers to procure it, become instrumental to their fertilization, either by scattering the dust of the stamens upon the stigmata of the same flower, or by carrying it from those which produce only male blossoms to those that bear female ones, and thereby rendering the latter fertile.
No class of insects renders so much service in this way as bees; they have however been accused of injuring vegetables, in three ways: 1st, by purloining for their combs the wax which defends the prolific dust of the anthers from rain; 2ndly, by carrying off the dust itself, as food for their young larvæ; and 3dly, by devouring the honey of the nectaries, intended to nourish the vegetable organs of fructification[AF].