Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1885 — Why Bees Work in the Dark. [ARTICLE]

Why Bees Work in the Dark.

A lifetime may be spent in investigating the mysteries hidden in a bee-hive and still half of the secrets would be undiscovered. The formation of the cell has long been a problem for the mathematician, while the changes which the honey undergoes offer at least an equal interest to the chemist. Every one knows what honey fresh from the comb is like. It is a clear yellow syrup, without a trace of solid sugar in ft. Upon straining, however, it gradually assumes a crystalline appearance—it candies, as the, saying is, and ultimately becomes a solid mass of sugar. It has not been suspected that this Change is due to a photographic action; that the same agent which determines the formation or camphor and lodine crystals in a bottle causes the syrup honey to assume a crystalline form. This, however, is the case. M. Schiebler, an eminent chemist, has inclosed honey in stoppered flasks, some of which he has kept in perfect darkness, while others have been exposed to the light. The invariable result has been that the sunned portion rapidly crystallizes, while that kept in the dark has remained perfectly liquid. And this is why bees work in perfect darkness, and why they are so careful to obscure the glass windows which are sometimes placed in their -hives. The existence of their young depends on the liquidity of the saccharine food {iresentd to them, and if light wras slowed access to this, the syrup would gradually acquire a more or less solid consistency; it would seal up the cells, and in all probability prove fatal to the inmates of the hiv&