Fig. 20.—Queen Cells in Situ.
Bees-wax forms a not unimportant article of commerce. From Germany, Greece, Cyprus, and still more largely from North America, we derive what is needed to make up the deficiency in our home production of it. Its uses are numerous. For household purposes, especially for polishing furniture, for some varnishes and unguents, for candles and matches, for modelling, particularly in dentistry, it is consumed in great quantities. Since the introduction of paraffin and similar substances for lighting purposes, the amount used for candles has diminished, though the demand for it in other directions does not appear to have fallen off. Bee-keepers now use it greatly for "foundation-comb."
CHAPTER IX.
POLLEN, OR BEE-BREAD.
Origin—Collection—Conveyance—Deposition—Quantity Stored—Uses—Artificial Substitutes.
Honey consists, like most saccharine substances, of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. It is fitted, therefore, as a food to supply the waste in the body of the bee produced by respiration; but for the nourishment of muscular tissue, and so for the growth of the larvæ and pupæ, some nitrogenous material is required. This is obtained by the insects from the pollen of flowers. This substance, we need hardly say, is the fertilising powder necessary for the production of seeds in plants, and growing on the anthers, or tops of the stamens, within the corolla of most flowers. The workers in search of honey rub off this farina with their hairy bodies and with the bristles of their legs. Then, on taking wing, they clear it off by rapid combings of their limbs; and rolling the powder into little pellets, they deposit it in pockets situated on the outside of the middle joint of the hindmost pair of legs. When filled, these receptacles with their loads appear like coloured balls on the laden workers. Sometimes the bees get so covered with pollen from plants containing large quantities of it, that they cannot clear themselves of the powder till they return to their homes; and, in some cases, they need the assistance of their fellows to brush off what adheres too tightly, or in places not easily reached by the individual herself.
Fig. 21.—Hind-leg of a Bee.
When the pollen-laden bee has reached the combs, she searches for a cell already containing the same material as that she is carrying, or which is suitable for her purpose. Then, having found what she wants, she inserts her hindmost legs into the cell, and, by a dexterous movement, detaches the little balls, and, on retiring, gives herself some vigorous shakes, as if to clear herself of still adherent flower-dust. Then another worker, whose duty it is to see to the proper storing of the bee-bread, rams it down with her head into a compact mass, and the process goes on till the cell is filled.
No particular portion of the combs seems selected for the deposit of this substance, nor is it ascertained that what is procured from any particular kind of plant is placed apart; but a mixture of various pollens appears to be made, though during the prevalence of any special flower yielding the material, certain colours predominate, as might be expected, in the stores of bee-bread.