Aristotle, Second Part of THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

II: 128 pages - You are on Page 32

The honeycomb is made from flowers, and the materials for the wax they gather from the resinous gum of trees, while honey is distilled from dew, and is deposited chiefly at the risings of the constellations or when a rainbow is in the sky: and as a general rule there is no honey before the rising of the Pleiads. (The bee, then, makes the wax from flowers. The honey, however, it does not make, but merely gathers what is deposited out of the atmosphere; and as a proof of this statement we have the known fact that occasionally bee-keepers find the hives filled with honey within the space of two or three days. Furthermore, in autumn flowers are found, but honey, if it be withdrawn, is not replaced; now, after the withdrawal of the original honey, when no food or very little is in the hives, there would be a fresh stock of honey, if the bees made it from flowers.) Honey, if allowed to ripen and mature, gathers consistency; for at first it is like water and remains liquid for several days. If it be drawn off during these days it has no consistency; but it attains consistency in about twenty days. The taste of thyme-honey is discernible at once, from its peculiar sweetness and consistency.

The bee gathers from every flower that is furnished with a calyx or cup, and from all other flowers that are sweet-tasted, without doing injury to any fruit; and the juices of the flowers it takes up with the organ that resembles a tongue and carries off to the hive.

Swarms are robbed of their honey on the appearance of the wild fig. They produce the best larvae at the time the honey is a-making. The bee carries wax and bees' bread round its legs, but vomits the honey into the cell. After depositing its young, it broods over it like a bird. The grub when it is small lies slantwise in the comb, but by and by rises up straight by an effort of its own and takes food, and holds on so tightly to the honeycomb as actually to cling to it.

The young of bees and of drones is white, and from the young come the grubs; and the grubs grow into bees and drones. The egg of the king bee is reddish in colour, and its substance is about as consistent as thick honey; and from the first it is about as big as the bee that is produced from it. From the young of the king bee there is no intermediate stage, it is said, of the grub, but the bee comes at once.

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