The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-05-15
BEES N THEIR HIVES.
Facts About the Honeymakers Only
Lately Uncovered

Harvey Sutherland, in Ainslee's Magazine.
1 do not know for how many thousands
of years man has studied bees, but UP to
August, 176S, it was universally believed
that beeswax was pollen chewed up into a
paste. In that month and year a French
peasant, name now lost. reported the exact
truth about its manufacture to his local
society Of beekeepers. And how do you
suppose he made this great discovery?
You'd never guess it in the world. He
watched them make it, instead of trying to
reason about 1t. Bees are telescope AMI
mails, and In where one part slides into
another he saw the scales of wax forming.
II you feed chickens generously and shut
them up in a dark, warm place, they fatten
quickly. BeeSwax is not chemically q fat,
but II is so near allied thereto that ii is Sc
creted under precisely the same conditions.
The bees I'LL themselves as full of honey
as they can hold, cluster in a bunch in the
warmth and darkness of the hive, and in
about five days the wax Is sweated out in
little plates. They take them out and chew
them UP to make them soft and pliable for.
comb-building. Wax costs fifteen times it's
weight in honey, and the bees make it go as
far as possible. One pound Of beeswax will
inclose about $4,000 honey cells: To save
them all the bother he can, the modern
beekeeper supplies his bees with the mid
rib or foundation. on each side OF which
they build cells about half an inch deep
and about one-fifth of an inch in diameter.
The foundations are sheets OF wax run
through rollers that stamp them with
pyram1dal lamentations. One cell does not
back square up against another. III you
stick needles through the three facets that
make the pyramidal indentation In the
back or q cell they will come out In three
cells on the other side. That distributes
the weight OF the honey better.
"One or the strange things about us hu-
man beings Is that we cannot seem TO get
II into our heads that the truth is more de-
lghtful than any kind OF a story that we
man make VI. Here Is the bee making
six-sided honey cells. each one bottomed
with three diamond-shaped facets. To fill
a space with boxes that would nit together
snugly the boxes would have TO be triangles,
squares and hexagons. OF these the hexa-
gon contains the most in proportion to the
material used in making the box. The ro-
manticists and realists Qor. there are ro-
manticlsts and r~ealists In science as in ev-
erythlng else) are half a mind that the
bees inquired all this out themselves by their
own WISDOM, and half a mind that they
nave no sense at all, but are pretty little
automata wound up and set a-going at an
angie or sixty degrees. II you will sit tight
now and hold fast / will try to show you
now far advanced they would have TO be
IN plane and solid geometry TO lay of one
OF those three diamond-shaped facets that
close the end of the six-sided cell. IL We
are going TO be mathematical we might as
well De hanged for an old sheep as killed
Tor q young lamb, so we will call the dia-
mond-shaped facet a rhomb. an eduilateral
parauelogram. having obliQue angles Now.