Bee, honey, and wax

Use in the book

In one passage, the soul kneads judgments as the bee kneads wax, while honey is made otherwise and flows or exhales like floral fragrance. The short sequence about poetry gives the products an evaluative contrast: wax without honey is like verse without poetry, and a drop may suffice. The later ruminant-brain fragment says honey is not made without kneading it, after wondering whether the bee too is ruminant. This change of emphasis should remain visible; it is not evidence that all three passages express one unchanging physiological mechanism.

Places to read

1. I, p. 289, entry 2, ¶1Kneaded judgments are distinguished from honey’s flowing or exhaling.
2. I, p. 357, entry 6, ¶1Wax/verse is set against honey/poetry.
3. II, p. 522, entry 1, ¶1Rumination and kneading return in a different account of honey.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves the successive material images and the explicit perhaps about the bee’s rumination. The wasps’ honey in the middle witness remains source text, not an independently checked zoological assertion. No chronological doctrinal development is inferred from the contrasting uses.