436 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



the eye of Huber, the thermometer stood in the hive at about 92°. In 

 colder chmates, however, the bees will probably be less active in the 

 winter. They are then generally situated between the combs towards 

 their lower part. But when the air grows milder, especially if the rays 

 of the sun fall upon the hive and warm it, they awake from their lethargy, 

 shake their wings, and begin to move and recover their activity ; with 

 which their wants returning, they then feed upon the stock of honey and 

 bee-bread which they have in reserve. The lowest cells are first uncovered 

 and their contents consumed ; the highest are reserved to the last. The 

 honey in the lowest cells being collected in the autumn, probably will not 

 keep so well as the vernal. 



The degree of heat in a hive in winter, as I have just hinted, is great. 

 A thermometer near one, in the open air, that stood in January at 6|° 

 below the freezing point, upon the insertion of the bulb a little way into 

 the hive rose to 22^° above it ; and could it have been placed between the 

 combs, where the bees themselves were agglomerated, the mercury, Reau- 

 mur conjectures, would have risen as high as it does abroad in the warm 

 days in summer.^ Huber says that it stands in frost at 86° and 88° in 

 populous hives.- In May, the former author found in a hive in which he 

 had lodged in a small swarm, that the thermometer indicated a degree of 

 heat above that of the hottest day of summer."^ He observes that their 

 motion, and even the agitation of their wings, increases the heat of their 

 atmosphere. Often, when the squares of glass in a hive appeared cold to 

 the touch, if either by design or chance he happened to disturb the bees, 

 and the agglomerated mass in a tumult began to move different ways, 

 sending forth a great hum, in a very short time so considerable an acces- 

 sion of heat was produced, that when he touched the same squares of 

 glass he felt them as hot as if they had been held near a fierce fire. By 

 teasing the bees, the heat generated was sometimes so great as to soften 

 very much the wax of the combs, and even to cause them to fall.^ 



The above conclusions, however, of Reaumur and Huber, as to the 

 great temperature of the interior of bee-hives in winter, are contrary to 

 the results obtained by George Newport, Esq., from his minute and very 

 valuable series of experiments to determine this point, which will be fur- 

 ther adverted to in directing your attention to the hybernation of insects ; 

 but this excellent comparative anatomist, of whose labors British ento- 

 mology is so justly proud, has not only fully confirmed what these entomol- 

 ogists have advanced as to the extra heat generated by bees in their hives 

 in summer, but, after showing that all insects have a temperature greater 

 than that of the surrounding atmosphere, and that this temperature, as in 

 vertebrate animals, is intimately dependent on the volume and velocity of 

 their circulation, and the quantity and activity of their respiration, has 

 proved that it is in consequence of the greater energy of this last function 

 in bees and humble-bees, owing to the superior development and capacity 

 of their trachea and vesicular dilatations, that their power of producing 

 heat is so much greater than that of most other insects. If, as happened 

 to myself a few days ago, a wild bee should chance to drop on a news- 



abroad in the shade at 51 1-2^. When the sun shone there was quite a cluster of them at 

 the mouih of the hives, and great numbers were buzzing about in the air before them. 

 ' V. 671. 2 i. 351. note*. ' ^ Ubi. supr. * Eeaura. v. 672. 



