78 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY . 



Transition Cells. — As drone are one fifth larger than worker cells, 

 aud as both are combined in one and the same piece of comb, a transi- 

 tion cannot be made from one to the other without some disturbance 

 in the regularity of the structure. It would be a nice problem to de- 

 termine the way in which this could be effected with the greatest econ- 

 omy of space and material. The bees do not appear to have any 

 systematic method of making such a change. More commonly, they 

 effect it by a gradual alteration of the diameters, thus enlarging a 

 worker into a drone, or narrowing a drone into a worker cell. This 

 alteration is usually made in from four to six rows. The following 

 table gives an illustration of the rate of alteration in such a case, be- 

 ginning with four drone cells of the usual size, and ending with four 

 worker cells. 



Four drone cells measured in the 



This last measurement exactly equals that of four worker cells. 

 The rate of the reduction of the size of the cell is not uniform, the dif- 

 ferences between successive rows being .05, .02, .01, .03, ,03 inch. We 

 have, however, seen the transition made with two rows of transitional 

 Fig. 5. cells, and as in Fig. 5, with only one. In 



this last case, the regularity of two adjoin- 

 ing rows is sacrificed. 



In consequence of the gradual narrow- 

 ing or widening of the transition cells, the 

 comb tends to become more or less triangu- 

 lar and the cells to become disturbed. The 

 bees counteract this tendency by the occasional intercalation of an addi- 

 tional row, of which two instances are given in Fig. 6, at a and Z>, where 

 three rows of worker cells are continuous with two of drone cells, c d 

 and ef; or, reversing the statement, and supposing the transition, as in 

 the building of the comb, is from worker to drone cells, a row of the 

 latter is from time to time omitted as the rows a and b; in this way, 



