The observation has recently been made that the bees in the hive, even when they are undisturbed, wipe off on the combs the minute drops of bee poison (formic acid) which from time to time exude from the tip of their sting. And this excellent preservative medium is thus sooner or later contributed to the stored honey. The more excitable and the more ready to sting the bees are, the greater will be the quantity of formic acid which is added to the honey, and the admixture of which good honey needs. The praise which is so commonly lavished upon the Ligurian race of our honey bees, which is indisposed to sting--and such praise is still expressed at the peripatetic gatherings of German bee-masters--is therefore from a practical point of view a false praise. Now we understand also why the stingless honey bees of South America collect little honey. It is well known that never more than a very small store of honey is found in felled trees inhabited by stingless _Melipona_. What should induce the _Melipona_ to accumulate stores which they could not preserve? They lack formic acid. Only three of the eighteen different known species of honey bees of northern Brazil have a sting. A peculiar phenomenon in the life of certain ants has always been problematical, but now it finds also its least forced explanation. It is well known that there are different grain-gathering species of ants. The seeds of grasses and other plants are often preserved for years in their little magazines, without germinating. A very small red ant, which drags grains of wheat and oats into its dwellings, lives in India. These ants are so small that eight or twelve of them have to drag on one grain with the greatest exertion. They travel in two separate ranks over smooth or rough ground, just as it comes, and even up and down steps, at the same regular pace. They have often to travel with their booty more than a thousand meters, to reach their communal storehouse. The renowned investigator Moggridge repeatedly observed that when the ants were prevented from reaching their magazines of grain, the seeds begun to sprout. The same was the case in abandoned magazines of grain. Hence the ants know how to prevent the sprouting of the grains, but the capacity for sprouting is not destroyed. The renowned English investigator John Lubbock, who communicates this and similar facts in his work entitled "Ants, Bees, and Wasps," adds that it is not yet known in what way the ants prevent the sprouting of the collected grains. But now it is demonstrated that here also it is only the formic acid, whose preservative influence goes so far that it can make seed incapable of germination for a determinate time or continuously.