HOW HONEYBEES PRODUCE HONEYCOMB 



269 



as in the case of ordinary cells." 



But the bee is a scraper as is the 

 mason when he builds a chimney or 

 makes a cement and stone wall. Have 

 you never noticed how he slaps on 

 roughly a trowel full of mortar and 

 spends most of his time in scraping 

 the sides? So it is with the honeybee. 

 She keeps piling up the end of a cylin- 

 der and then constantly goes into her 

 cylinder and scrapes the sides to make 

 them thin. It is this going in that does 

 the hexagonal work and is the exact 

 equivalent of what I did when I pressed 

 a solid on the soap bubbles. She does 

 more than scrape. Her body is covered 

 with hair, even feathers one might al- 

 most call them when they are viewed 

 under a microscope. She is like a gun 

 swab and when she pushes into that 

 cell she pushes out the sides. If there 

 is onlv one cell as in the case of the 

 queen bee cell the pushing out of the 

 sides makes a cylinder, but there are 

 other bees making other cells and they 

 are close to this and it is this pressure 



on the sides, with not the slightest 

 intent nor skill on the bee's part, but 

 purely the effect of a mathematical 

 law, that makes the hexagon. As 

 Cheshire told us years ago, "The geo- 

 metrical relation, which embellish the 

 wax tracery of the bee are the neces- 

 sary result of her mode of proceeding. 

 And mathematics is no more her en- 

 dowment than it is that of the soap 

 and water we have been considering. 

 These wonders come because the whole 

 creation is founded and sustained by 

 the great Geometer, whose laws of 

 weight and measure neither falter nor 

 vary, so that, for the advantage of 

 man, the experience and observation of 

 the past make him the prophet of the 

 future." And Cheshire proceeds to 

 make it perfectly plain that a single 

 cell made by a honeybee is always cir- 

 cular. The queen cell is an example of 

 this. "It is circular — the typical form 

 — in cross section, because it is built 

 alone, and is made to grow with the 

 growth of the grub it contains." 



HONEYCOMB CELLS ON A SHEET.THE BACKGROUND) OF PURE BEESWAX ARE ALWAYS 

 CIRCULAR IN THEIR ATTACHMENT. THE SAME IS TRUE OF CELLS ON GLASS. 



