INSTINCT 205 



were converted into shallow basins, appearing to the 

 eye perfectly true or parts of a sphere, and of about 

 the diameter of a cell. It was most interesting 1 to me 

 to observe that wherever several bees had begun to 

 excavate these basins near together, they had begun 

 their work at such a distance from each other, that by 

 the time the basins had acquired the above stated 

 width (i.e. about the width of an ordinary cell), and 

 were in depth about one sixth of the diameter of the 

 sphere of which they formed a part, the rims of the 

 basins intersected or broke into each other. As soon 

 as this occurred, the bees ceased to excavate, and 

 began to build up flat walls of wax on the lines of 

 intersection between the basins, so that each hexagonal 

 prism was built upon the scalloped edge of a smooth 

 basin, instead of on the straight edges of a three-sided 

 pyramid as in the case of ordinary cells. 



I then put into the hive, instead of a thick, square 

 piece of wax, a thin and narrow, knife-edged ridge, 

 coloured with vermilion. The bees instantly began on 

 both sides to excavate little basins near to each other, 

 in the same way as before ; but the ridge of wax was so 

 thin, that the bottons of the basins, if they had been 

 excavated to the same depth as in the former experi- 

 ment, would have broken into each other from the 

 opposite sides. The bees, however, did not suffer this 

 to happen, and they stopped their excavations in due 

 time ; so that the basins, as soon as they had been a 

 little deepened, came to have flat bottoms ; and these 

 flat bottoms, formed by thin little plates of the 

 vermilion wax having been left ungnawed, were 

 situated, as far as the eye could judge, exactly along 

 the planes of imaginary intersection between the basins 

 on the opposite sides of the ridge of wax. In parts, 

 only little bits, in other parts, large portions of a 

 rhombic plate had been left between the opposed basins, 

 but the work, from the unnatural state of things, had 

 not been neatly performed. The bees must have 

 worked at very nearly the same rate on the opposite 

 sides of the ridge of vermilion wax, as they circularly 



