The quantity of pollen that is collected in the course of a season, by the diligence of the bees, has been estimated at from sixty to seventy pounds; and the weight of the honey, so affluent a hive will produce by abstraction from the bees, is calculated at as much as sometimes fifty pounds. This, however, must be vastly exceeded by the quantity collected, as it is being constantly consumed for sustenance, and for the secretion of the raw material of wax, as well as for the production of the liquid which converts this into its mouldable consistency. It is possible to estimate pretty nearly the quantity of honey required for each secretion of the raw material, by finding what the honey-bag will contain when gorged, as it is this quantity which seems to make the eight scales of it upon the ventral plates, for they cannot convey more up when they hang themselves in the festoons to secern it. But it is impossible to know what addition this liquid from their mouths makes to it when they manipulate it into its plastic state, other bees often undertaking this task, which may apply themselves to it with a larger stock than the wax secreters possess, they being perhaps already exhausted by their labours. It is a singular fact that wax is more rapidly and largely made by feeding the bees with dissolved sugar than from the honey they collect themselves, the sugar thus evidently containing more of its productive elements.
Some of the labours within the hive are apparently continued at night, or the bees may be then revelling, after the day’s toils, in social enjoyment, or otherwise more worthily employed; for, to use the words of the benevolent apiarian, the Rev. Wm. Chas. Cotton, “If you listen by a hive about nine o’clock, you will hear an oratorio sweeter than any at Exeter Hall. Treble, tenor, and bass are blended in the richest harmony. Sometimes the sound is like the distant hum of a great city, and sometimes it is like a peal of hallelujahs.”
This is the history of the hive and its inhabitants. Modifications may occasionally occur, but nothing of sufficient consequence seriously to affect or neutralize this ordinary routine. It would occupy space already too largely encroached upon to go into these minute particulars, which, although parts of their general history, where treated of in special detail, are not necessarily the province of a work which speaks of them as but one member of the family of which it collectively discourses. As the space occupied by what was really essential to be known about them, has exceeded the due dimensions of their share to it, although of paramount interest, infinitely greater than that which attaches to the economy of the whole of the rest of the group combined, it will not, I trust, be considered that I terminate abruptly, in drawing here to a close.