CELL-MAKING INSTINCT. 249 



the comb without injuring the delicate hexagonal walls. 

 These walls, as Professor Miller has kindly ascertained for 

 me, vary greatly in thickness ; being, on an average of twelve 

 measurements made near the border of the comb, ^\^ of an 

 inch in thickness ; whereas the basal rhomboidal plates are 

 thicker, nearly in the proportion of three to two, having a 

 mean thickness, from twenty-one measurements, of 5 J^ of 

 an inch. By the above singular manner of building, strength 

 is continually given to the comb, with the utmost ultimate 

 economy of wax. 



It seems at first to add to the difficulty of understanding 

 how the cells are made, that a multitude of bees all work 

 together; one bee after working a short time at one cell 

 going to another, so that, as Huber has stated, a score of 

 individuals work even at the commencement of the first 

 cell. I was able practically to show this fact, by covering 

 the edges of the hexagonal walls of a single cell, or the ex- 

 treme margin of the circumferential rim of a growing comb, 

 with an extremely thin layer of melted vermilion wax ; and 

 I invariably found that the color was most delicately dif- 

 fused by the bees — as delicately as a painter could have 

 done it with his brush — by atoms of the colored wax having 

 been taken from the spot on which it had been placed, and 

 worked into the growing edges of the cells all round. The 

 work of construction seems to be a sort of balance struck 

 between many bees, all instinctively standing at the same 

 relative distance from each other, all trying to sweep equal 

 spheres, and then building up, or leaving ungnawed, the 

 planes of intersection between these spheres. It was really 

 curious to note in cases of difficulty, as when two pieces of 

 comb met at an angle, how often the bees would pull down 

 and rebuild in different ways the same cell, sometimes 

 recurring to a shape which they had at first rejected. 



When bees have a place on which they can stand in their 

 proper positions for working — for instance, on a slip of 

 wood, placed directly under the middle of a comb growing 

 downward, so that the comb has to be built over one face of 

 the slip — in this case the bees can lay the foundations of one 

 wall of a new hexagon, in its strictly proper place, project- 

 ing beyond the other completed cells. It suffices that the 

 bees should be enabled to stand at their proper relative dis- 

 tances from each other and from the walls of the last com- 

 pleted cells, and then, by striking imaginary spheres, they 

 c<m build up a wall intermediate between two adjoining 



