To offer pure honey would, of course, be useless; no carnivorous creature would touch it, even were it starving.

I must spread the honey on meat; that is, I must smear the dead bee with honey, lightly varnishing it with a camel's-hair brush.
Under these conditions the problem is solved with the first few mouthfuls.

The grub, having bitten on the honeyed bee, draws back as though disgusted; hesitates for a long time; then, urged by hunger, begins again; tries first on one side, then on another; in the end it refuses to touch the bee again.

For a few days it pines upon its rations, which are almost intact, then dies.

As many as are subjected to the same treatment perish in the same way.
Do they simply die of hunger in the presence of food which their appetites reject, or are they poisoned by the small amount of honey absorbed at the first bites?
I cannot say; but, whether poisonous or merely repugnant, the bee smeared with honey is always fatal to them; a fact which explains more clearly than the unfavourable circumstances of the former experiment my lack of success with the freshly killed bees.
This refusal to touch honey, whether poisonous or repugnant, is connected with principles of alimentation too general to be a gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus grub.