Honeycomb

“ Attracted by the tempting scent, the fly might often be seen upon the honeycomb, taking up the sweet contents of the cells with its long proboscis, which is not unlike an elephant’s trunk, the honey being drawn up by means of flaps at the end which act as suckers. ”

“ Their interior resembles a honeycomb, pierced with a thousand holes, each of which forms a snug retreat for a nest. More care appears to have been bestowed upon their outside, than upon the generality of the dwelling-houses, for they are painted and ornamented. ”

“ It is more fluid than our own honey, and has a scented flavour. It is drunk off like water by these natives. The honeycomb is merely a collection of bags of brown wax of the size of a walnut and aggregated [94] together in an irregular mass, which is often found in a hollow in the lower part of the trunk of a tree. The inhabitants of this region have apparently no acquaintance with the uses of wax, and thus differ from the Andaman Islanders, who employ it for caulking the leaks in their canoes and for waxing their bowstrings. ”

“ It waits there for the follower to open the hive and usually until the person has departed with his loot of honeycomb, when it comes down to the plundered bee’s nest and begins to feed on the bits of comb left strewn about. The time during which the bird may wait quietly may vary from a few minutes to well over an hour and a half.”
African natives regard the bird as an almost infallible guide to honey. They try to attract it by grunting like a ratel or chopping on trees to imitate the sound of opening a nest. ”

“ For those who are unmusical, to play on the flute; to read or write, for those who have not yet learned; is no easier than to make birds of women, or women of birds. From the dumb and lifeless egg Nature moulds her swarms of winged creatures, aided, as some will have it, by a divine and secret art in the wide air around us. She takes from the honeycomb a little memberless live thing; she brings it wings and feet, brightens and beautifies it with quaint variety of colour:—and Lo! the bee in her wisdom, making honey worthy of the gods. ”

“ In my walk this morning, I found heath-plants of such luxuriance hanging from the rocks, that one stalk measured ten feet in length. The gardener, who accompanied me, drew my attention to another curiosity. In a secluded spot, not far from the pretty rustic dairy, a swarm of bees had made a large honeycomb in the open air; it was suspended to the branch of a blackberry-bush in the thicket. The weight of the honey bowed the branch to the earth; and they were still busily adding to the store. The dairy is roofed with earth, out of which the purple heather is growing. ”

“ In the bear tribes there is a marked preference for honey manifested, which reveals a sense of taste that works on the imagination, and leads him to incur the risk of being stung to death by an infuriated swarm of bees rather than forego the sensual delights of plundering the hive and licking out the honeycomb when he is master of the spoils. ”

“ In a hole in the tree trunk, or in the ground nearby the bees' nest is to be found.
When the beehive is opened, and the honey taken, the honey-guide will eat the comb that is left, and apparently it is for this that the complicated behavior of leading of man to the beehive is developed.
Wax of the honeycomb is a usual food of this species, judging by stomach examinations, and one wonders how they get it when man is not about to open the bee trees for them. The birds have no special adaptation for getting into the hives ”

“ The illustration given in fig. 25 will serve more readily than words to enlighten the would-be bee-keeper. It shows a portion of honeycomb (natural size) not precisely as it appears when the frame containing it is lifted out of the hive, but as would be seen on two or more combs in the same hive, namely, the various cells built for—and occupied by—queens, drones and workers; also the larvae or grubs in the various stages of transformation from egg to perfect insect, with the latter biting their way out of sealed cells. It also shows sealed honey and pollen in cells, &c. ”

“ And when the manufacture is complete, the bee knows only one mode of stowage; this other creature packs it, as the case may require, in bags or baskets, in boxes or barrels, all his own workmanship, and all cleverly made. What, then, is the reason that when we look at a honeycomb we are apt to be reminded of the wisdom and goodness of God; but looking at the same thing magnified—surveying a hundred hogsheads of sugar piled up in a West Indian warehouse—we have no devout associations with the ingenuity and industry which placed them there? ”

“ BEFORE PARTING
A month or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine's heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.
Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to change the bitterness of it,
The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,
To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
Over my face and eyes.
And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat
Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red? ”

“ When we took leave of the kind old gentleman, he gave me in a basket a nice honeycomb to take to my mother; and since that my father has bought me a hive of bees. Every summer I plant flowers in my garden for them, that they may not have far to go for their honey. ”

“ The mud-wall of a cottage at Peterborough, in Northamptonshire, was observed to be frequented by these creatures, and on examination it was found to be wrought, by their operations, into the appearance of Honeycomb.”
The appearance only, alas! for although these creatures [107] thus like to live in the neighbourhood of a Bishop, and though “there are none which display more affection for their offspring,”—they by no means live by collection of treasures of sweet dew. “They are excessively fierce, and, without hesitation, attack insects much larger than themselves. ”

“ There is a little insect closely allied to these moths, which does a vast amount of harm to the bee-combs. This is the honeycomb-moth, of which there are in England two species, both belonging to the genus Galleria. This little creature is continually trying to make its way into the hives, and is as continually opposed by the bees, who instinctively know their enemy. If it once slips past the guards, the unfortunate bees are doomed to lose a considerable amount of their stored treasures, and have sometimes been so worried that they have been obliged to leave the hive altogether. ”

“ The wooden platter was first placed on this rude table. Then le Bourdon opened his small box, and took out of it a piece of honeycomb, that was circular in shape, and about an inch and a half in diameter. The little covered tin vessel was next brought into use. Some pure and beautifully clear honey was poured from its spout into the cells of the piece of comb, until each of them was about half filled. The tumbler was next taken in hand, carefully wiped, and examined, by holding it up before the eyes of the bee-hunter. ”

“ By damping gunpowder and forming it into a cake it would burn slowly and send up dense fumes, which would answer the same as sulphur. Then they could chop a way into the honeycomb. Seeing a tomtit on a bough watching for a chance to take a bee if one alighted before he went in, they considered it a sign they were off the mainland of Africa, as this was the honey-bird.
Several tall spruce firs grew lower down, and under these they could see over the New Sea to the south-east towards the unknown river. Here they sat down in the shade and cracked their nuts. ”

“ The hubbub increased, the opponents of the Musk-rat inquiring who his ancestors were; until a diversion was created by an able discourse of the Macaw on structures generally, which he classified so as to include the honeycomb, entering into so much admirable exposition that there was a prevalent sense of the honeycomb having probably been produced by one who understood it so well. ”

“ It appears to me that, in imputing to insects and birds the same love of colour for its own sake and the same aesthetic tastes as we ourselves possess, we may be as far from the truth as were those writers who held that the bee was a good mathematician, and that the honeycomb was constructed throughout to satisfy its refined mathematical instincts ”

“ If a piece of honeycomb were placed a few steps away from their dwelling, and out of the crowd of bees that would flock to it you were to crush or injure twenty or thirty, the others who had not been attacked would not even turn their head. ”

“ If these bees were left to themselves, they would find a home after a time in a hollow tree, or under the roof of a house, or in some other cavity, and begin to build their honeycomb there. But as we do not wish to lose their honey we will bring a hive, and, holding it under the swarm, shake the bough gently so that the bees fall into it, and cling to the sides as we turn it over on a piece of clean linen, on the stand where the hive is to be. ”

“ The method is, if the honey be in a hollow tree, or in a cleft of the rock, or such a locality, to pay no attention to the buzzing of the bees, or to attempt in any way to knock them away, should they settle on you, but to slowly insert the hand into the nest, and withdraw the honeycomb and carry it away. It rarely happens that the bees attack any one, and should they do so their sting is far less painful than is that of the English bee. ”

“ In the cells, or little holes in the wax honeycomb, are many eggs that after a while will hatch out into other bees, mostly workers or drones. The queen bee lays the eggs that hatch into other bees. But if it should happen that the queen should die, the worker bees at once begin to feed to some of the half-hatched little bees a peculiar kind of food gathered from the flowers. It is a sort of mixture of honey and juices from the bees’ bodies. ”

“ To take possession of the honey few Europeans like to venture on the bold course followed by many natives, as from some cause or another, which we are utterly at a loss to explain, a naked black fellow will invade the stronghold of the bees and carry off the honeycomb in their very midst, with little or no preparation. ”

“ When the female returns to the hive, she is the object of every attention, the workers pressing round her, and forming quite a train. Many approach her, and lick the surface of her body; others brush her, caress her, and present her their trunks full of honey. Forty-eight hours after her return to the hive the mother bee generally begins laying. [86] Running over the honeycomb, she deposits an egg in each empty cell, and fixes it to the bottom by means of a glutinous secretion, in such a way that the egg is suspended in the interior of the cell. ”

“ Professor Garrod thus describes the probable order of events in the act of rumination: "The paunch contracts, and in so doing forces some of the food into the honeycomb bag, where it is formed into a bolus by the movement of its walls, and then forced into the gullet, from which by a reverse action it reaches the mouth, where it is chewed and mixed with the saliva until it becomes quite pulpy, whereupon it is again swallowed. ”

“ Marian saw the nest first and pointed it out to the other children merely as a matter of curiosity, but Delbert straightway became excited.
[3] Pronounced pah-nahlʹ; plural, pah-nahʹ-layss. It is the regular Spanish word for honeycomb.
There was honey in that bees’ nest; he knew it; splendid honey. Hadn’t Clarence bought some once of an Indian and given him a lot?90 And Clarence had told him all about panales. You take all the outside honey and comb away and leave the core, and they will build on again, just as tame bees will. ”

“ As soon as I had made a little space, I placed the upper comb, on which the bees were hangingin clusters, in the new hive, and put it on the plank prepared for it; I then descended with the rest of the honeycomb, and filled a cask with it, which I had previously washed in the stream; this we covered with sail-cloth and planks, lest the bees, attracted by the smell, should come to claim their own. ”

“ Nowadays the straw skeps are very seldom seen, for their place is taken by the wooden hives we have already considered. The frames containing the combs are all of the same size, so that they may be transferred from one hive to another. For instance, should a certain hive have collected a large quantity of honey for winter use, and another hive not have sufficient, the bee-keeper may take one or two frames of this honeycomb from the rich hive and put it into the poor one, and in this way both lots of bees will live throughout the winter. ”

“ To get the honey, he must wait till night, and then with material for a torch, a vessel for the honey, and a rope to lower it, he climbs up into the darkness and out onto the great branches, where with lighted torch he292 drives the bees away and cuts off the well-filled honeycomb, and lowers it to others on the ground. ”

“ He went to the eastward of this tree and dug up a piece of its root, and then turned to the westward, and dug up another piece; after this, he took the eastern root, and ordered deaan Mevarrow to rub it on a stone with a little water, and sprinkle the water among the bees, and the honeycombs in the hives; and, if any one, said he, shall steal the honey, and eat the least morsel of it in a quarter of a day, (for they reckon not by hours, as we do,) they will swell and break out in spots, like a leopard, from head to foot, and in three days they will die. ”