Perhaps there is nothing more wonderful, in the whole wonderful anatomy of the bee, than her digestive organism and its contributory system of glands, each of which has its special and important use. When she draws up the nectar from the flowers, it passes at once into the first of her two stomachs, which is simply and solely a reservoir. Here it can remain indefinitely at the will of the bee; or it can be thrown up and poured into the comb-cells, to be brewed into honey; or it can be allowed to pass through a valve at the base of the reservoir into the bee’s second and lower stomach, where digestion takes place and the honey and pollen are formed into chyle. But, by one of the most ingenious devices in nature, this second stomach is also capable of returning its contents to the mouth, and the chyle is there changed into bee-milk for the nourishment of the larvæ. The worker-bee has, in all, four distinct glands, each secreting a fluid with properties different from the other three. These glands are all situated in the mouth. Two of them have a common opening in the upper side of the root of the tongue; and as the bee sucks, their combined secretions mingle with the flower juices automatically, and the first step in the change of the nectar into honey takes place. The third gland is in the roof of the mouth, and it is the secretion from this gland which acts on the regurgitated chyle, and changes it into brood-food. The fourth gland is double. These twin-glands have their openings at the base of the jaws, and the action of chewing is necessary to excite their secretion. The valve between the upper, or honey-stomach, and the lower, or chyle-stomach, has an extensible neck, and the bee can, at will, raise this telescopic piece through the interior of the honey-sac until the valve is pressed against the opening into the gullet. Thus the contents of the lower stomach can be driven into the mouth without coming into contact with the stored sweets in the reservoir, and this pre-digested matter is always ready at an instant’s notice for the use of the larva, or for the nourishment of drones or queen. It has been said that the nursery-work of the hive is undertaken exclusively by the young bees during the first fortnight or so of their lives. After this time they make their first foraging expedition, beginning with pollen-gathering, and relinquishing this in turn for the collection of nectar when they have arrived at full maturity. The mature workers take no part in the feeding of the larvæ, except on very rare emergencies. In relation to this, it is a curious fact that the gland in the roof of the mouth, which acts on the chyle, forming it into brood-food, is in full development only during the first weeks of the worker-bee’s career. After that its activity swiftly declines, until, in old workers, it becomes largely atrophied.