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Honey-Sac and Wax-Pockets: Moffett

Moffett recommends giving infants honey for "breeding teeth," and a modern writer says, "Honey promotes the excretions and dissolves the glutinous and starchy impedimenta of the body." Honey-Sac and Wax-Pockets Honey was in ancient times believed to have the power of procuring clearness of vision, which may be one reason for its reputation in giving the power of divination, the clearness of the physical vision being referred to the mental power of seeing. "The honey pure and neat wherein the Bees are dead, let that drop into the eyes; or honey mixt with the ashes of the heads of Bees, makes the eyes very clear," is Marcellus' opinion according to Moffett. Galen recommends mingling one part of the gall of the sea-tortoise with four parts of honey.

Galen also gives another prescription, - "Take Bees dead in combs, and when they are through dry make them into powder, mingle them with the honey in which they died, and anoint the parts of the Head that are bald and thin haired, and you shall see them grow again."

This prescription does not appear to be in general use at the present time!

Moffett would have us believe that their ashes "beaten with Oyl" are good to make the hair white.

Bees and honey are put to many other medicinal uses; indeed in the opinion of Moffett "Honey wherein is found dead Bees, is a very wholesome medicine, serving for all diseases."

The value of honey is not confined to its effect upon the human body, and at the present time it is used as well in manufacturing to stiffen certain cotton fabrics; and in the arts it is used in forming adhesive compounds as well as for other purposes.

According to Bevan the Jews of Moldavia and the Okraine prepare from honey a sort of sugar, which is solid and as white as snow, and which is sent to the distilleries at Dantzic. The honey is placed in a vessel which is a bad conductor of heat, and exposed to frost, protected from sun and snow, for three weeks. As a result of this treatment the honey becomes clear and hard like sugar. The French chemist M. Cadet of Vaux gives the following method of purifying honey as a substitute for sugar. Boil honey and water with charcoal. Strain, boil, and skim until it hardens when dropped in water.

Honey is used for preserving fruits and also for enveloping and thereby preserving grafts, birds' eggs, and valuable seeds which have to be transmitted from one climate to another, and it is said to keep them available for a considerable time. Besides the honey-sac the abdomen of the bee contains the remarkable "wax-pocket."

Aristotle tells us 66 wax is made from flowers; " and Pliny says: "Bees form wax from the blossoms of all trees and plants, with the sole exception of the rumex (sorrel, or monk's rhubarb) and the echinopodes (a kind of broom)."

For long it was believed that the bees collected wax from flowers and brought it home on their thighs like pollen. Even Butler says: "The matter thereof (to make cells] they gather from flowers with their fangs; which being kept soft in their mouths, with the heat of their little bodies, of the air, and of their hives, is wrought into combs."

Later it was believed that pollen was changed into wax in the stomach of the bee.

It is now known that wax is a product of honey, which is eaten by the bee, altered into a fluid secretion by glands beneath the abdominal walls, and exuded as wax.

The abdomen of the bee is formed of rings held together by a flexible membrane so that they can overlap each other or be drawn apart somewhat like a telescope. Honey-Sac and Wax-Pockets The worker-bee has six abdominal rings, each composed of several pieces, one being on the under side and forming a broad curved plate. The part of each plate on the second, third, fourth and fifth rings overlapped by the preceding ring is smooth and light colored, and a little sunken so that it forms a shallow well; and when S. overlapped by the edge of the plate above is the so-called wax-pocket. The tissue inside the bee, beneath these depressions, is glandular in structure and secretes a liquid which exudes through the plate to the outer surface, where it hardens into a thin transparent scale of wax. These tiny scales are sometimes pushed down by exudations of the wax fluid above, and during the period of most active secretion may often be seen extending partly over the plate below. As the wax forms it is taken as needed from the pockets by the wax-jaws on the last pair of legs and conveyed to the mouth, where it is moulded and mixed with saliva to a consistency and form suitable to comb building. Beekeepers have often tried to find a substitute for wax, but their artificial products have never been successful, the paraffine and other materials used lacking the necessary consistency and power to resist heat and breaking down in the hive, even when the bees can be induced to use them.

The bee consumes vast quantities of honey at certain seasons; but instead of growing fat thereon, it gives forth wax. Wax is a very costly product, the bees using from ten to sixteen pounds of honey to produce one pound of it.

Honey and wax have been used as medicine from the earliest times, and wax was the foundation of plasters in past ages.

It was also used in many other ways, some of which Moffett explains : - "The rich, sick, or great men, desire their candles to be made of it, by reason of the sweet smell. Also the use of wax is not small in stopping the chinks in vessels, for tents in the camp to keep out rain, for bed-ticks that the feathers fly not out, to joyn pipes made of reeds, as Ovid sang concerning the shepherds of old. "And with the Reed well waxed they play'd and sang. "Also the most excellent Painters painted with wax, as Pliny reports, and they adorned ships with it. This kinde of painting, though it were not hurt by salt, nor by sun, nor by the winde, yet it was lost we know not how, when Apelles, Protogenes, and Zeuxis died. Also the Ancients were wont to smear over their writing-tables with wax before that paper was invented, as Juvenal describes it." Butler informs us that an oil of marvellous virtue in curing disease was distilled from wax.

Sealing-wax for letters and documents was also made of beeswax, which was of different colors in different countries, and Moffett informs us that the bees of America gathered black wax. Either the Americans at that time were very careless in preparing their wax, or else the "American" wax came from Mexico or South America, where the tropical bees build a very dark-colored comb. Shakespeare alludes to the use of wax in sealing documents in "Henry VI." where the rebels under Jack Cade meet on Blackheath, and one says, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

To which Cade replies, - "Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say Honey-Sac and Wax-Pockets 89 't is the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since."

Again in "King Lear," where Edgar, son of Gloucester, kills the steward and takes letters from his pocket, he says while breaking the seal, - "Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not :

To know our enemies' minds, we'd rip their hearts; Their papers, is more lawful."

In "Cymbeline" where Imogen receives a letter from her husband Leonatus she exclaims, - "Good wax, thy leave: -bless'd be, You bees, that make these locks of counsel! Lovers And men in dangerous bonds pray not alike:

Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet You clasp young Cupid's tables."