Bees do not solely confine themselves to flowers; in collecting honey they are fond of the juices of fruits also, and for this reason my aunt recommended this bee enclosure to be placed very near the orchard which Franklin planted. With their tongue, which my aunt says is not a tube, as some people have supposed, but a real tongue, they lap or lick the honey, and convey it into the first stomach, which is called the honey-bag, and which, when full, is much swelled—it is never found in the second stomach. How the wax is secreted from the honey, or what vessels are employed for that purpose, is not yet ascertained. But my aunt shewed me the wax-pockets of the bee; by gently pressing the body, we could perceive on each of its four segments, two whitish flaps, of a soft membranaceous texture, in which the wax is placed.
There is another substance made by the bees, and called propolis; it is collected from poplar, birch, fir, and gummy trees like the taccamahaca. Bees have been observed to open the buds with their mandibles, so as to draw from them a thread of viscid matter; and then, with one of their second pair of legs, they take it from the mouth, and place it in the baskets on their hind legs. It is used in stopping every chink of the hive, by which cold, or wet, or insects, can enter; it gives a finish to the combs, and the sticks which support these combs are covered with it as well as the interior surface of the hive.
In collecting the pollen from plants, it has been observed that bees never mix the farina of different flowers; each is made use of in separate little pellets, and it is said that skilful botanists have been able to distinguish by the farina what flowers the bee had visited.
My aunt told me that she had read of a lady who had so constantly attended to her bees, and was so beloved by them, that they seemed to delight in flying round her and listening to her voice; they had no sting for their kind mistress, and when, after a storm, she gathered them up, wiped, and tried to revive them by the warmth of her hand, they gently buzzed their gratitude as they recovered. When she visited the hive, she caused no alarm; and if, on seeing them less diligent than usual, or ill or languid, she poured a little wine at the outside of the hives, they always expressed their thanks in the same manner.
Franklin’s new apiary, you see, has been of great benefit to me, for it led to a long conversation with my good aunt, who told me all those circumstances and many others in her usual clear way; and when we came home, she put into my hands a little book called Dialogues on Entomology, in which she says I shall find much useful information about bees and other insects.
24th.—At breakfast this morning my uncle received a letter from a brother of Colonel Travers, who you know is at Madras. It was written while he also was at breakfast, and Mr. T. mentions that there were then on the table eatables of different kinds, which had come from the four quarters of the globe.
This set us to consider from whence all the articles that were on our own table had been collected. Every one named something. The tea from China, the coffee from Arabia, West Indian sugar, Narbonne honey, the salt from Cheshire, and our home-made bread, butter, and cream. Then there were Coalbrook-dale cups and saucers, an urn from Birmingham, tea-pots and spoons of Mexican silver, a butter-vessel of Bristol glass, knives of Swedish steel, and an Irish table-cloth and napkins.
Frederick proposed that we should calculate the number of people that must have been employed in producing all these various articles. He began with salt, as one of the simplest things on the table, and he easily ran through the operations of digging it out of the mine, making the little baskets in which it is sold, and conveying them by land or by water carriage to Gloucester; nor did he forget the wholesale and retail dealers, through whose hands they passed before they were deposited with my aunt’s housekeeper. But my uncle reminded him that making fine salt was not only a far more complicated process than he seemed to imagine, but also that, unless he took into account the machines employed in every one of the operations, and even the tools requisite for making those machines, he would not be able to give a satisfactory answer to his own proposition. “The same remark,” he continued, “will apply to the production of everything else on the table: this roll, for instance, must not only include the labour of the baker, but that of the bolter, the miller, the reaper, the sower, and the ploughman, besides the manufacturers of all the implements they used. Or, take coffee, which, however simple the mere gathering of the berries and drying them in the sun may appear, can only be brought to this country through the complex operations of commerce, and by means of a ship, which of itself includes the combined efforts of a hundred different trades before she can proceed a single mile on her voyage.”
“How rich, uncle,” said I, “must any country become, where the people are employed both in agriculture and manufactures!”
“Yes,” he replied, “as long as they are well paid, or, in other words, as long as there is a demand for as much as they can produce. But you know, Bertha, the inhabitants of any country can only consume a certain quantity of food, or a certain quantity of clothes; and if the hands employed raise more corn, or make more goods than are wanted, they must be thrown out of work until the overplus has been called for, as no one will pay for what they do not want. Something else, you see, is necessary to enrich a nation besides agriculture and manufactures.”