Published monthly by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Connecticut, 



Subscription, $1.00 a year Single copy, 10 cents 



Entered as Second-Class Matter June 12, 1909, at Sound Beach Post Office, under Act of March 3, 1897. 



Volume X 



APRIL, 1918 



Number 11 



How Honeybees Produce Honeycomb. 



By Edward F. Bigelow, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Connecticut. 



j CONTINUED FROM THE FEBRUARY NUMBER.] 



Unanimous Support of the Thesis by Eminent Natural Scientists. 



SOME of our readers have re- 

 marked, intending to be compli- 

 mentary as to the thesis, that the 

 demonstration is so plain that they do 

 not see any reason why anybody 

 should think anything else, and conse- 

 quently they do not see any excuse foi 

 using fourteen pages of the February 

 number to prove an evident fact. From 

 my point of view the thesis is so con 

 vincmg that these criticisms of wasted 

 space are well founded. 



In this number we publish the un 



Some one has defined commerce as 

 the taking of goods from a place where 

 there is a supply to a place where there 

 is none. I have for a long time known 

 that the leading laboratories of the 

 land are in accord with what I call my 

 thesis, though I distinctly assert that 

 I claim no originality except in the 

 method of demonstration. Several 

 years ago I began to tell some beekeep- 

 ers that natural scientists do not agree 

 with them. The beekeepers maintained 

 that they are right and the natural 



qualified support of many prominent scientists wrong. My purpose in using 



so much space for the text and illus- 

 trations was not only to carry know- 

 ledge from where it exists to where it 

 does not but to carry it in a convincing 

 manner. I believe this to be the proper 

 work of Hie Agassiz Association, that 

 clearing house of information. I have 

 never desired to make original discov- 

 eries except in methods of popular ex- 

 ploitation. The .original publication 

 and the following letters from the 

 ablest scientists of this country should 

 forever establish the fact that the hexa- 

 gons of honeybees are the outcome of 



scientists. They fully sustain the the- 

 sis. 



But it is necessary to settle this 

 question everlastingly and authorita- 

 tively. I am not publishing the letters 

 of some who disagree with the theory 

 especially of prominent scientists thai 

 frankly and surprisingly admit that 

 they do not know. Several of our in- 

 fluential textbooks and, as mentioned 

 in the previous number, some of oui 

 leading bee journals insist on the act- 

 ual "intentional" hexagonal construc- 

 tion. 



Copyright 1918 by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Conn. 



