its thighs filled with farina, it is often met near the entrance by some of its companions, who first take off the load, and then devour the provisions so kindly brought to them. But, when none of the bees employed in the hive are hungry for this species of food, the carriers of the farina deposit their loads in cells prepared for that purpose. To these cells the bees resort, when the weather is so bad that they cannot venture to go to the fields in quest of fresh provisions. The carrying bees, however, commonly enter the hive loaded with farina. They walk along the combs, beating and making a noise with their wings. By these movements they seem to announce their arrival to their companions. No sooner has a loaded bee made these movements, than three or four of those within leave their work, come up to it, and first take off its load, and then eat the materials it has brought. As a

farther evidence that the bees actually eat the farina of flowers, when the stomach and intestines are laid open, they are often found to be filled with this dust, the grains of which, when examined by the microscope, have the exact figure, colour, and consistence of farina, taken from the antherae of particular flowers. After the farina is digested, and converted into wax, the bees possess the power of bringing it from their stomachs to their mouths. The instrument they employ in furnishing materials for constructing their waxen cells is their tongue. This tongue is situated below the two teeth or fangs. When at work, the tongue may be seen by the assistance of a lens and a glass-hive. It is then in perpetual motion, and its motions are extremely rapid. Its figure continually varies. Sometimes it is more sharp, at others it is flatter, and sometimes it is more or less concave, and partly covered with a moist paste or wax. By the different movements of its tongue the bee continues to supply fresh wax to the two teeth, which are employed in raising and fashioning the walls of

its cell, till they have acquired a sufficient height. As soon as the moist paste or wax dries, which it does almost instantaneously, it then assumes all the appearances and qualities of common wax. There is a still stronger proof that wax is the result of an animal process. When bees are removed into a new hive, and closely confined from the morning to the evening, if the hive chances to please them, in the course of this day several waxen cells will be formed, without the possibility of a single bee's having had access to the fields. Besides, the rude materials, or the farina of plants, carried into the hive, are of various colours. The farina of some plants employed by the bees is whitish; in others it is of a fine yellow colour; in others it is almost entirely red; and in others it is green. The combs constructed with these differently coloured materials are, however, uniformly of the same colour. Every comb, especially when it is newly made, is of a pure white colour, which is more or less tarnished by age, the operation of the air, or by other accidental circumstances. To bleach wax, therefore, requires only the art of extracting such foreign bodies as may have insinuated themselves into its substance, and changed its original colour.

Bees, from the nature of their constitution, require a warm habitation. They are likewise extremely solicitous to prevent insects of any kind from getting admittance into their hives. To accomplish both these purposes, when they take possession of a new hive, they carefully examine every part of it, and, if they discover any small holes or chinks, they immediately paste them firmly up with a resinous substance which differs considerably from wax. This substance was not unknown to the ancients. Pliny mentions it under the name of propolis, or bee-glue. Bees use the propolis for rendering their hives more close and perfect, in preference to wax, because the former is more durable, and more powerfully re

sists the vicisitudes of weather than the latter. This glue is not, like wax, procured by an animal process. The bees collect it from different trees, as the poplars, the birches, and the willows. It is a complete production of Nature, and requires no addition or manufacture from the animals by which it is employed. After a bee has procured a quantity sufficient to fill the cavities in its two hind thighs, it repairs to the hive. Two of its companions instantly draw out the propolis, and apply it to fill up such chinks, holes, or other deficiencies, as they find in their habitation. But this is not the only use to which bees apply the propolis. They are extremely solicitous to remove such insects or foreign bodies as happen to get admission into the hive. When so light as not to exceed their powers, they first kill the insect with their stings, and then drag it out with their teeth. But it sometimes happens that an ill-fated snail creeps into the hive. It is no sooner perceived than it is attacked on all sides, and stung to death. But how are the bees to carry out a burden of such weight? This labour they know would be in vain. They are perhaps apprehensive that a body so large would diffuse, in the course of its putrefaction, a disagreeable or noxious odour through the hive. To prevent such hurtful consequences, immediately after the animal's death, they embalm it by covering every part of its body with propolis, through which no effluvia can escape. When a snail with a shell gets entrance, to dispose of it gives much less trouble and expence to the bees. As soon as this kind of snail receives the first wound from a sting, it naturally retires within its shell. In this case, the bees, instead of pasting it all over with propolis, content themselves with glueing all round the margin of the shell, which is sufficient to render the animal for ever immoveably fixed.

But propolis, and the materials for making wax, are not the on

so

ly substances these industrious animals have to collect. As formerly remarked, beside the whole winter, there are many days in summer in which the bees are prevented by the weather from going abroad in quest of provisions. They are, therefore, under the necessity of collecting, and amassing in cells destined for that purpose, large quantities of honey. This sweet and balsamic liquor they extract, by means of their proboscis or trunk, from the nectariferous glands of flowers. The trunk of a bee is a kind of rough cartilaginous tongue. After collecting a few small drops of honey, the animal with its proboscis conveys them to its mouth and swallows them. From the phagus or gullet, it passes into the first stomach, which is more or less swelled in proportion to the quantity of honey it contains. When empty, it has the appearance of a fine white thread: but, when filled with honey, it assumes the figure of an oblong bladder, the membrane of which is so thin and transparent, that it allows the colour of the liquor it contains to be distinctly seen. bladder is well known to children who live in the country. They cruelly amuse themselves with catching bees, and tearing them asunder, in order to suck the honey. A single flower furnishes but a small quantity of honey. The bees are, therefore, obliged to fly from one flower to another till they fill their first stomachs. When they have accomplished this purpose, they return directly to the hive, and disgorge in a cell the whole honey they have collected. It not unfrequently happens, however, that, when on its way to the hive, it is accosted by a hungry companion. can communicate its necessity to the other, it is perhaps impossible to discover. But the fact is certain that, when two bees meet in this situation, they mutually stop, and the one whose stomach is full of honey extends its trunk, opens its mouth, which lies a little beyond the teeth, and, like ruminating ani,

This

How the one

mals, forces up the honey into that cavity. The hungry bee knows how to take advantage of this hospitable invitation. With the point of its trunk it sucks the honey from the other's mouth. When not stopped on the road, the bee proceeds to the hive, and in the same manner offers its honey to those who are at work, as if it meant to prevent the necessity of quitting their labour in order to go in quest of food. In bad weather, the bees feed upon the honey laid up in open cells; but they never touch these reservoirs when their companions are enabled to supply them with fresh honey from the fields. But the mouths of those cells which are destined for preserving honey during winter, they always cover with a lid or thin plate of wax.

We shall now give some account of the ingenious Mr. Debraw's discoveries concerning the sex of bees, and the manner in which their species is multiplied*. It was almost universally believed, both by ancients and moderns, that bees, like other animals, propagated by an actual intercourse of the male and female, though it never could be perceived by the most attentive observers. Pliny remarks, that apium coitus visus est nunquam; and even the indefatigable Reau mur, notwithstanding the many minute researches and experiments he made concerning every part of the economy of bees, and though he represents the mother, or queen-bee, as a perfect Messalina, could never detect an actual intercourse. From this singular circumstance, Miraldi, in his observations upon beest, conjectured that the eggs of bees, like those of fishes, were impregnated after they were deposited in the cells by the mother. He was farther confirmed in this opinion, by uniformly observing that a whitish liquid substance surrounded each egg

* See Philosophical Transactions, ann. 1777, part 1, page 15. Ilist. de l'Acad. de Scien. ann. 1712

which turned out to be fertile; but that those eggs round which no substance was to be found were always barren. The working bees, or those which collect from flowers the materials of wax, have generally been considered as belonging to neither sex. But Mr. Schirach, a German naturalist, in his History of the Queen of the Bees, maintains, that all the common bees are females, in a disguised or barren state; that the organs which distinguish the sex, and particularly the ovaria, are either obliterated, or, on account of their minuteness, have not hitherto been discovered; that, in the early period of its existence, every one of these bees is capable of becoming a queen bee, if the community choose to nurse it in a certain manner, and to raise it to that distinguished rank; and that the queen bee lays only two kinds of eggs, namely, those that are to produce drones or males, and those from which the working bees are to proceed.

The conjecture of Maraldi concerning the impregnation of the eggs after they are deposited in the cells, as well as the observations of Mr. Schirach concerning the sex of the working bees, have been completely verified by the experiments of Mr. Debraw. Both Maraldi and Reaumur had long ago discovered, that, in every hive, beside the large drones, there are males or drones as small as the working bees. By means of glass-hives, Mr Debraw observed, that the queen bee begins to deposit her eggs in the cells on the fourth or fifth day after the bees begin to work. On the first or second day after the eggs are placed in the cells, he perceived several bees sinking the posterior parts of their bodies into each cell, where they continued but a short time. After they had retired, he saw plainly with the naked eye a small quantity of whitish liquor left in the bottom of each cell that contained an egg. Next day he found that this liquor was absorbed into the egg, which, on the fourth day, is

hatched. When the worms escape from the eggs, they are fed for eight or ten days with honey by the working bees. After that period they shut up the mouths of the cells, where the worms continue inclosed for ten days more, during which time they undergo their different transformations.

"I immersed," says Mr. Debraw, all the bees in water; and, when they appeared to be in a senseless state, I gently pressed every one of them between my fingers, in order to distinguish those armed with stings from those that had none, which last I might suspect to be males. Of these I found sixtyseven, exactly of the size of common bees, yielding a litle whitish liquor on being pressed between the fingers. I killed every one, and replaced the swarm in a glass hive, where they immediately applied again to the work of making cells; and, on the fourth or fifth day, very early in the morning, I had the pleasure to see the queen bee depositing her eggs in those cells, which she did by placing the posterior part of her body in each of them. I continued to watch most part of the ensuing days, but could discover nothing of what I had seen before. The eggs, after the fourth day, instead of changing in the manner of caterpillars, were found in the same state they were in the first day." The next day about noon, the whole swarm forsook the hive, probably because the animals perceived that, without the assistance of males, they were unqualified to multiply their species. To show the necessity of the eggs being fecundated by the male influence, Mr. Debraw relates an experiment still more decisive.

"I took," says he, " the broodcomb, which, as I observed before, had not been impregnated; I divided it into two parts; one I placed under a glass bell, No. 1, with honey-comb for the bees' food; I took care to leave a queen, but no drones, among the common bees I confined in it. The other piece of brood

comb I placed under another glass bell, No. 2, with a few drones, a queen, and a number of common bees proportioned to the size of the glass. The result was, that, in the glass No. 1 no impregnation happened; the eggs remained in the same state they were in when put into the glass; and, upon giving the bees their liberty on the seventh day, they all flew away, as was found to be the case in the former experiment; whereas, in the glass No. 2, I saw, the very day after the bees had been put under it, the impregnation of the eggs by the drones in every cell containing eggs; the bees did not leave their hive on receiving their liberty; and, in the course of twenty days, every egg underwent all the above mentioned necessary changes, and formed a pretty numerous young colony, in which I was not a little startled to find two queens."

The appearance of a new queen in a hive where there was no large or royal cell, made Mr. Debraw conjecture that the bees are capable, by some particular means, of transforming a common subject into a queen. To ascertain the truth of this conjecture, he provided himself with four glass hives, into each of which he put a piece of brood-comb taken from an old hive. These pieces of brood-comb contained eggs, worms, and nymphs. each hive he confined a sufficient number of common bees, and some drones or males, but took care that there should be no queen.

In

"The bees," Mr Debraw remarks, "finding themselves without a queen, made a strange buzzing noise, which lasted near two days, at the end of which they settled, and betook themselves to work. On the fourth day, I perceived in each hive the beginning of a royal cell, a certain indication that one of the inclosed worms would soon be converted into a queen. The construction of the royal cell being nearly accomplished, I ventured to leave an opening for the bees to get out, and found that they returned as re