The observations of +Mr. John Hunter+ tended to confirm this view of the matter; still more so, those of +M. Huber+ and +Son+. In order to determine the point with greater precision, Huber instituted many experiments. He lodged a recent swarm in a straw-hive, leaving at its disposal only a sufficiency of honey and water for its consumption, and preventing it from going beyond the precincts of a room, so closed as to admit only a renewal of the air. At the end of five days as many cakes of beautifully white, though very fragile wax, were suspended from the roof; the honey had totally disappeared. Still however, as there was a possibility that the thighs and stomachs of the bees might have conveyed pollen from the parent hive, he withdrew these five combs, and replaced the bees in the hive with a fresh supply of honey and water; they renewed their toil with unabated industry, and soon fabricated new combs: these last were taken from them; when the patient and indefatigable insects commenced a third structure of comb. Five times in succession were their works thus completed and removed, although during the whole of this period they were fed merely with honey and water, and could not possibly have had access to farina. These experiments, so uniform in their results, give indubitable validity to the fact,--that honey, through the organic intervention of bees, may be converted into wax. A contrary experiment was made, by abundantly supplying a hive with fruit and pollen only: but during eight days confinement the bees produced no wax whatever, nor exhibited any plates under their abdominal rings; no combs were formed, nor was an atom of farina touched,--a clear proof that farina supplies neither wax nor sustenance to adult bees. The improbability of this indeed is evinced by its abundance in hives whose tenants have died of famine. And as to its being the constituent of wax, +Reaumur+ calculated that a well stocked hive might collect at least 100 pounds of pollen in a season, whereas the weight of wax fabricated in the same time would not exceed two pounds. Experiments have proved the excellence of sugar as a substitute for honey, and in some instances its superiority for the formation of wax. It might otherwise have been supposed that bees might form comb from some particles of wax accidentally present in the honey, and that these afforded the pabulum for this secretion. To prove therefore that the saccharine principle alone enabled the bees to produce wax, being still confined, they were supplied with a syrup made with Canary-sugar and water, and at the same time comparative experiments were made in another hive, where the bees were fed on honey and water. The syrup-fed bees produced wax sooner and more abundantly than the honey-fed bees. Another fact was also incontrovertibly elicited; namely, that in the old hives the honey is warehoused, and that in the new ones it is consumed and transmuted into wax.