How are Bel’s claimed meals tested before the later dragon and den episodes?

Daniel is the king's honored guest. Babylonians worship Bel and provide daily twelve great measures of flour, forty sheep and six vessels of wine. The king adores Bel daily, but Daniel worships the living creator of heaven, earth and all flesh. Asked whether Bel's consumption proves life, Daniel smiles: clay within and brass outside cannot eat. The angry king threatens the priests with death if they cannot account for the food, and Daniel with death if Bel consumes it. Daniel agrees. Seventy priests, with wives and children, propose that the king set the food, shut the temple and seal it with his ring. The narrator discloses their secret entrance beneath the table.

After the king sets the food, Daniel has ashes spread through the temple in his presence. The doors are shut and sealed. Overnight the priests and families enter and eat everything. At dawn the seals are whole and the king praises Bel, but Daniel laughs and keeps him from entering: the floor bears men's, women's and children's footprints. The king seizes the priests with their wives and children; they show the private doors. He puts them to death and gives Bel to Daniel, who destroys the idol and temple.

The people also worship a great dragon. When the king presents it as a living god, Daniel refuses adoration and obtains permission to kill it without sword or club. He boils pitch, fat and hair together, makes lumps and puts them in its mouth; it bursts asunder. Babylonians angrily accuse the king of becoming a Jew and threaten him and his house unless he delivers Daniel. Compelled by their violence, the king gives him up. Daniel spends six days in a den of seven lions. Their usual daily two carcasses and two sheep are withheld so that they may devour him.

In Judea Habacuc has made pottage and bread for reapers. An angel orders him to take the dinner to Daniel in Babylon. Habacuc says he has never seen Babylon and does not know the den. Taking him by the top of his head and hair, the angel carries him by the force of his spirit. Habacuc calls to Daniel with the food God has sent. Daniel thanks God for remembering those who love him and eats; the angel returns Habacuc to his own place. On the seventh day the king comes to bewail Daniel and finds him sitting among the lions. He praises Daniel's God, draws him out and casts those responsible for his destruction into the den, where they are immediately devoured. He calls the earth's inhabitants to fear the God of Daniel, the Savior working signs and wonders who delivered him.

The edition regards Evilmerodach, Nabuchodonosor's son and successor, as the most probable king here. It distinguishes this six-day confinement caused by sedition from the one-night confinement under Darius for prayer. Some identify Habacuc with the minor prophet, others with a different man. The text neither fixes the food delivery to the sixth day nor explains a medical mechanism for the dragon's death.